Codici says court upholds Decreto Dignità advertising ban

Italy's Constitutional Court has upheld the Decreto Dignità ban on gambling advertising in ruling 172/2026, filed on 20 October, according to a statement by the association Codici. The court confirmed the general prohibition on direct and indirect promotion of gambling, Codici said.

The rule sets a penalty of 20% of the value of the advertising, but not less than €50,000 for each violation, with no possibility of adjusting it to the individual case. The court held that this mandatory minimum can be manifestly disproportionate in some situations, such as occasional promotional activity by a natural person acting outside any business logic on a channel followed by a limited group of users. It rejected simply removing the minimum, which it said would leave negligible or even no penalties in many cases.

The €50,000 minimum therefore remains the rule. AGCOM may apply a lower amount only where the penalty is manifestly disproportionate, assessing the gravity of the violation, the work done to eliminate or mitigate its consequences, the personality of the author and their economic conditions, according to the Codici statement.

The case arose from an appeal by a 28-year-old salaried worker who was fined €157,000 by AGCOM for publishing promotional videos on three online channels with very few followers and views, from which he earned about €1,000.

Marcello Padovani, a lawyer for Codici, said the court had reviewed the Decreto Dignità again and confirmed its correctness, and that the ruling indicates fines should be proportionate to the gravity of the conduct found. Ivano Giacomelli, national secretary of Codici, said the rules set by the Decreto Dignità are not in question and that the ban on advertising remains fully legitimate and in force.

Giacomelli and Padovani said the ruling balances proportionality of penalties with effective deterrence for consumers, particularly minors and people at risk of addiction. They said the court also noted the specific risks of content distributed on online platforms accessible to anyone without filters or controls, and that the minimum-per-violation mechanism continues to allow high penalties against large platforms.