A court in Milan suspended a case against Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi today and said it would ask the European Court of Justice to rule on whether a new Italian law on false accounting meets European standards.
Mr Berlusconi, a billionaire businessman and media mogul, is currently on trial in Milan on charges of false accounting in connection with the takeover of food company SME in the 1980s.
Earlier this year, Italy passed a new law which effectively decriminalised false accounting, narrowing the definition of the offence and cutting the maximum sentence for conviction to 18 months from five years.
Having suspended the trial, judicial sources said the Milan court would now call on the European Court of Justice, the supreme arbiter of European laws, to establish whether Italy's new false accounting law meets European norms.
Since the new law came into force early this year, dozens of high-profile people have been cleared of false-accounting charges, including Mr Berlusconi's brother.
However Mr Berlusconi and his former lawyer and defence minister, Mr Cesare Previti, still face trial in Milan on charges of bribing judges to win control of SME in perhaps the most serious case still pending against the 66-year-old prime minister.
Mr Berlusconi and Mr Previti have always denied the charges and say that Milan's magistrates are conducting a politically motivated vendetta against them.