ABSTRACT: The text recalls European Parliament Resolution of 12 March 1992, according to which "no State can dispose of life...providing for the death penalty in its regulations...". It is the first document "that envisions an abolitionist political and juridical space".

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 26 October 1993)

"No State, especially a democratic one, can dispose of the life of its citizens or of any other person on its territory, providing for the death penalty in its regulations as a consequence of offences, even if heinous ones".

European Parliament Resolution, 12 March 1992

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the democracies arisen from the ashes of communism would like to resort to capital punishment to check the criminal emergency. There are fears that the death penalty could be reinstated as a means to settle the accounts between opposite national factions. The European Parliament's resolution is the first document that envisions an abolitionist political and juridical space where life is indispensable to the state.

Many other resolutions and international conventions condemn or repeal the death penalty in the name of the right to life; the European Parliament instead advocates its abolition in the name of a new relationship between state and citizen, and includes it among the conditions to be fulfilled for the relations with the countries of the Council of Europe and of the CSCE.