The Italian government violated residents' human rights by allowing festering heaps of garbage to go uncollected from the streets for months, a European high court said today.

Eighteen Italians who live or work in the town of Somma Vesuviana, near Naples, had filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights alleging the Italian government endangered their health and ruined the environment by failing to collect waste.

In its preliminary ruling Tuesday, the Strasbourg-based court said Italian authorities had for a "lengthy period been unable to ensure the proper functioning of the waste collection, treatment and disposal service".

This resulted in a violation of the residents' right to respect for their private lives and their homes, the court said.

Somma Vesuviana and the surrounding Campania region were under a state of emergency from 1994 to 2009 due to garbage collection problems that saw thousands of tonnes of waste pile up.

The state of emergency was lifted after new landfills were constructed and new German incinerators helped dispose of some of the waste.

But at the worst of the crisis, in 2008, plaintiffs were forced to "live in an environment polluted by the piling-up of rubbish on the streets", the court said.

The waste mountain has partly been blamed on the Naples mafia, the Camorra, suspected of cashing in on a wide range of activities from drug trafficking to waste management and real estate.

In March 2010, the European Court of Justice criticised Rome for failing to adequately tackle waste in Naples and the surrounding area.

Then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi responded by sending soldiers to help clean up the squalid streets.

Under the court's ruling, parties have a three-month period to request a delay before it becomes final.

The court also found that Italy did not violate plaintiffs' rights to provide information on the potential risks of the rubbish.