One step further in the protection of animals in apartments: the Cagliari court ruled that individual apartment owners cannot be prevented from keeping dogs and cats or other pets in their homes. Even if the eventual ban was unanimously approved by all the condominiums.
The Court of Cagliari thus clarified, explicitly for the first time, that even the regulation of a contractual nature, i.e. the one resolved unanimously or prepared by the builder of the condominium building and annexed to the individual deeds of sale, is void as contrary to the reform of the condominium and, therefore, to public order.
The reform referred to is that introduced in 2012 in the civil code: in it it was established that the condominium regulations cannot contain prohibitions on the possession of animals in the house. However, the first interpretations had held that this provision could only be waived with unanimous consent: now, however, the Sardinian prosecutor's office has clarified, and all animal lovers will be able to legitimately keep them in their apartments, according to the "sacral right to the animal companionship".
In fact, the ruling speaks of the need "to enhance the human-animal relationship and, on the other hand, in the affirmation of this last principle also at a European level", and also cites other sentences of the Cassation which recognize "the right to visit in prison to the prisoner's dog, as a family member, or the right to visit the hospitalized patient's dog in the hospital, constituting the man-animal relationship as an activity that creates the human personality”. Even the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, ratified by Law 130/2008 in article 13, establishes that the Union and the Member States "take full account of the needs in terms of animal welfare as sentient beings".
A decision that will cause discussion: if on the one hand it is aimed at promoting the human-animal relationship and to discourage uncivilized behavior such as mistreatment and abandonment, on the other hand perhaps forgetting that a condominium is made up primarily of people, who are not necessarily all animal lovers. And above all that not all of them can tolerate their presence if respect for cleanliness and public peace is not strictly guaranteed.
