9 July 2018 - Invited by the President of the Constitutional Court of the Italian Republic, Dr Giorgio Lattanzi, a delegation of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia led by the President, Dr Miroslav Šeparović, paid an official visit to the Constitutional Court of Italy in Rome. At the meeting, held on 6 July 2018 in the premises of the Italian Court, judges Aldo Carosi and Mario Rosario Morelli, Vice-presidents of the Italian Constitutional Court and Dr Snježana Bagić, Deputy-president, Lovorka Kušan and Davorin Mlakar, of the Croatian Constitutional Court, exchanged experiences related to the constitutional judiciary of the two countries. Special emphasise was given to the relations with the two European courts, in Strasbourg and Luxemburg, and the role of the EU law in the constitutional case-law. To that end they addressed the mechanism in Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU regarding preliminary rulings of the ECJ. Furthermore, they discussed issues concerning the constitutional review of referenda. President Šeparović took the opportunity to congratulate the colleagues on the 70^th anniversary of the Italian Constitution, which entered into force on 1 January 1948.

This meeting, which was organised with the help of the Croatian Embassy to Italy and H. E. Jasen Mesić, Ambassador, was the first step towards establishing bilateral cooperation between the two Constitutional Courts, to be continued by a return working visit of the Italian Constitutional Court to Zagreb, and formalised through a memorandum of cooperation.