Servizi pubblici, diritti fondamentali degli utenti, principio di eguaglianza. Appunti per un percorso di diritto costituzionale

Abstract

The work focuses, from the perspective of constitutional law, on the figure of the user, on his particular status and, above all, on the nature of the subjective legal situations pertinent to it. Starting from the substantial silence of administrative and constitutionalist doctrines on the category of user rights, the contribution analyzes the long evolutionary process through which these type of rights emerged in the legal landscape, highlighting the decisive role played by the process of European integration and the competitive principle. The study attempts, therefore, to provide a solution to the question concerning the exact nature, from the constitutional point of view, of the rights of users, especially with respect to services of economic importance (and therefore, today, provided within a specifically regulated market), as well as that concerning the relationship between these and the fundamental legal situations protected directly by the Constitution.