European court finds Berlusconi's Mediaset tax-fraud trial was fair, rejects appeal

The ruling

The European Court of Human Rights has found that the trial behind Silvio Berlusconi's 2013 tax-fraud conviction was fair. The judgment was unanimous and was announced on Thursday, 22 October 2026. The court declared admissible only the part of the complaint that questioned the impartiality of the Court of Cassation, and it ruled the rest inadmissible. Berlusconi, a former prime minister and founder of Forza Italia, died in June 2023, and his heirs pursued the case at Strasbourg after his death.

“The Court rejected Mr Berlusconi's other complaints as being either manifestly ill-founded or out of time.”

The conviction behind the case

The case concerned Mediaset television rights and complicity in tax evasion linked to the group's media operations in 2002 and 2003, according to ANSA. The Court of Cassation confirmed the conviction on 1 August 2013, which made it final. The original four-year sentence was reduced to one year, and Berlusconi served it through community service. The verdict also cost him his Senate seat and a ban on holding public office until 2018.

The impartiality complaint

Berlusconi argued that one judge was not impartial. He pointed to an interview that judge Antonio Esposito gave to Il Mattino on 5 August 2013, after the verdict was read but before the reasons were filed on 29 August. The applicant said the judge had wanted to influence colleagues by previewing the reasoning. The court found no objectively justified doubt about impartiality, because the decision had already been taken before the interview. It said it was not ruling on whether Esposito's conduct was appropriate or on any disciplinary consequences, only on its effect on impartiality. The court nonetheless stressed that magistrates must show the utmost discretion in dealing with the press. Hostile remarks attributed to the judge, reported by people at private dinners and by staff at an Ischia hotel, were judged insufficiently proven. The court also held that the judge's later legal initiatives reflected the hostile climate that followed the conviction, not prior bias.

Timeline and the heirs

The chain of dates runs from the Cassation ruling in August 2013 to the Strasbourg judgment in October 2026, with the application and a 2021 step in between.

Most reports give 28 December 2013 as the date Berlusconi lodged the application. Il Fatto Quotidiano instead says it was filed in 2014 and that the court accepted it in April 2021, when it put ten questions on the fairness of the trial to the Italian government, then led by Mario Draghi. After Berlusconi's death, his heirs decided to continue the case before the European court. Il Fatto Quotidiano said the ruling ends the family's hopes that the case could rehabilitate Berlusconi and give the family a larger political role in the coming months.