Published on 29 May 2026
GRAND CHAMBER
CASE OF MACAGNINO AND MARZO v. ITALY
(Applications no. 61799/15 and 62690/15)
CASE OF CAVALLOTI AND OTHERS v. ITALY
(Applications no. 29614/16, 44617/16, 44618/16 and 47278/16)
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
The parties are invited to consolidate and supplement the observations they submitted before the Chamber, and to respond to the following additional questions:
Exhaustion of domestic remedies
1. Did the applicants in Macagnino and Marzo case exhaust effective domestic remedies, as required by Article 35 § 1 of the Convention?
In particular, did they raise before the national authorities, at least in substance, the same complaints that they later brought before the Court under Article 8 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1, bearing in mind that, for the purpose of exhaustion of domestic remedies, the Court must take into account not only the facts but also the legal arguments presented at the domestic level (see Fu Quan, s.r.o. v. the Czech Republic [GC], no. 24827/14, § 171, 1 June 2023)?
Alleged violation of Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention
2. Was the confiscation of the applicants’ assets lawful under Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention (all applications)? In particular:
(a) Was the relevant domestic law in force at the material time, as interpreted and applied by the domestic courts, sufficiently precise and foreseeable with regard to:
(i) the criteria for declaring individuals as posing a danger to society, either on the basis of habitually living on the proceeds of crime (ordinary danger) or on suspicion of belonging to a mafia-type organisation (special danger);
(ii) the absence of any temporal limitation on the initiation of preventive confiscation proceedings (confisca di prevenzione) (see, mutatis mutandis, Dimitrovi v. Bulgaria, no. 12655/09, § 46, 3 March 2015);
(iii) the possibility of confiscating:
- assets acquired long before the initiation of preventive confiscation proceedings (confisca di prevenzione), without any temporal restriction, and
- assets acquired outside the period during which the individuals concerned were considered to pose a danger to society?
(b) If the relevant domestic law was sufficiently precise and foreseeable, was the confiscation of the applicants’ assets lawful, having regard to the alleged failure by the domestic courts to establish:
(i) a connection between the period during which the relevant applicants were considered to pose a danger to society and the time when those and other applicants acquired the assets in question;
(ii) a link between those assets and the predicate offences or circumstances (see, mutatis mutandis, Todorov and Others v. Bulgaria, nos. 50705/11 and 6 others, § 215, 13 July 2021)?
3. Did the domestic authorities, in confiscating the applicants’ assets in the Cavallotti and Others case strike the requisite fair balance between the applicants’ right to the peaceful enjoyment of their possessions and the aim pursued by the confiscation having regard, inter alia, to the fact that three of those applicants were declared to pose a danger to society on the basis of suspicions of belonging to a mafia-type organisation, notwithstanding their acquittal of the offence of participation in such an organisation?