Construction, the Infrastructure Decree resuscitates and extends old titles

A retroactive extension, which could reactivate or in any case greatly lengthen the life of manyexpired or expiring building permits. This is the novelty that is preparing to enter the law converting the Infrastructure Decree (32/2026), under discussion in the Senate Environment Committee (rapporteurs: Tilde Minasi, Lega, and Claudio Fazzone, Forza Italia), according to an amendment just filed by the rapporteurs. An amendment that greatly widens the scope of the special regime, linked to the high cost of materials, introduced by theUkraine Decree in May 2022.

Under the regime currently in force (amended in March this year by the law converting the Milleproroghe), building permits, Scias and landscape authorisations benefited from a 48-month extension, provided that they were issued by 31 December 2025 and provided that, at the time of the interested party's communication of its wish to avail itself of the extension, the deadlines for starting and finishing work had not expired.

This second condition would disappear with the amendment to the decree under discussion today. Instead, it would be sufficient for access to the extra 48 months that the deadlines for start and end of work had not expired when the law converting the Ukraine decree came into force, i.e. on 21 May 2022. The reopening of the deadlines would thus look back to the past. First of all, the extension would not be on demand, but would be applied to all building titles. Moreover, the reactivation of expired titles would be possible.

A three-year building permit, with work started in March 2022, would theoretically have expired in March 2025, net of the other extensions brought by the amendments to the Ukraine decree over time. With this amendment, its life is automatically extended by four years and can rununtil 2029.

The decision to opt for a different system of extensions is justified by the troubled life this rule has had over time. In its first version, the decree extended by one year the start and end date for all titles formed by the end of 2022. This gave companies more time to complete their operations. The Milleproroghe 2023 extended this deadline to two years, applying it to titles formed before the end of 2023. The Energy Decree of the beginning of 2024 has, once again, revised the discipline to 30 months for all securities formed by 30 June 2024. Then, at the end of 2024, the Milleproroghe intervened again, to extend to 36 months the life of bonds formed by the end of 2024. Finally, the Milleproroghe at the beginning of 2026 extended the life of bonds issued by the end of 2025 to 48 months. In all, that is a total of five extensions.