(By Paul Virgo) Rome, January 28 - Giovanni Canzio, the first president of Italy's supreme Court of Cassation, on Thursday called for illegal immigration to be decriminalised. "The response on the criminal procedure ground (to the crime of illegal immigration) is that it is useless, ineffective and in some ways damaging," Canzio said at the inauguration of the 2016 judicial year. "Substituting the crime with an offense and administrative sanctions, including expulsion, would give concrete results". Silvio Berlusconi's third government made entering Italy illegally a crime in 2009, but the law has been blamed for clogging up the legal system as Italy deals with an increasingly large waves of arrivals from North Africa. Premier Matteo Renzi's government has said it will decriminalise illegal immigration, but only once it has prepared a comprehensive reform of the regulations regarding asylum seekers. Canzio also said Thursday that efforts to combat Islamist terrorism must not breach fundamental rights. "The fight against every form of organised crime or terrorism, including international jihadist terrorism, must be conducted in respect of the rules laid down by the Constitution and the laws of the State," Canzio said. The supreme court chief went on to call on parliament to avoid changing laws too frequently. "It would be desirable for the legislature to avoid intervening on the regulatory fabric with law changes that are too frequent, even with the changes in economic and social factors that characterises modern life," Canzio said. He said such changes were "often inspired by emergency logic that does not pay attention to the of the systematic profile of the system, making it difficult to form long-term jurisprudence that is more stable and reliable". Justice Minister Andrea Orlando also spoke at Thursday's ceremony and called on politicians to take the cue from judges and introduce new rights in response to a society that has changed. "The activity of the judge, that of applying the law to a particular case, cannot elude change," said Orlando. "The recognition of new rights is precisely this: the application of fundamental principles to a society that has changed," he continued. "The alleged substitution (by the judiciary) occurs when politics is unable to do the same," the minister concluded. Orlando's comments came on the day the controversial bill on civil unions for same-sex couples was due to hit the Senate floor to fill a legislative vacuum. Italy is the only western European country not to have either legalised gay marriage or recognised civil unions between same-sex couples. The bill is opposed conservatives and some Catholics in Premier Matteo Renzi's Democratic Party (PD) are also against it, above all the opening of the possibility for one partner in a civil union of the other partner's biological child.