Thesis title: Transizione ecologica e mobilità sostenibile: una prospettiva costituzionale
This research seeks to situate the 2022 constitutional reform within the broader framework of the ecological transition, showing how the constitutional entrenchment of the protection of the environment, biodiversity and ecosystems (Art. 9) and the orientation of economic initiative toward environmental and social ends (Art. 41) have reshaped the public tools available to steer change. In this context, the transport sector emerges as a critical nexus: it contributes significantly to greenhouse-gas emissions, affects air quality and urban liveability, and requires infrastructural and technological investments consistent with European objectives (the Green Deal, NGEU) and national strategies (PNRR, PTE, PNIEC). The thesis argues that sustainable mobility is not merely a matter of decarbonisation, but also of accessibility and equity: without targeted correctives, territorial and digital divides widen and the so-called “transport poverty” becomes entrenched, constraining the exercise of social rights and economic participation. The so-called mobility justice, theorised by the U.S. sociologist Mimi Sheller, thus becomes the criterion for assessing the constitutional conformity of policies on sustainable mobility, so that the transition is both green and just. In this direction, the renewed Art. 41 of the Constitution authorises measures consistent with environmental protection and social purposes, subject to constitutional guarantees. These purposes allow the legislature to design instruments for the internalisation of externalities and, at the same time, to provide redistributive safeguards capable of ensuring equitable access to sustainable mobility. In this sense, Art. 41 operates as a clause of legitimation and a coherent expression of the constitutionally oriented social function of the economy, necessary to bear and allocate the costs of transport decarbonisation without sacrificing—but rather promoting—the “justice” of the transition. On this basis, in conclusion, the research contends for the development of a (right to) sustainable mobility as a value and task of the Republic, anchored in Arts. 9, 16 and 41 and oriented by the substantive equality mandate of Art. 3, para. 2: a constitutionally binding programme that requires the removal of inequalities and the fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the ecological transition.