A black mark remains on condemned buildings

Condemned buildings outside the ordinary regime. Despite recent pronouncements by the Council of State (such as sentence 2848/2026) in favour of full equality between condoned buildings and buildings approved, from the outset, according to ordinary procedures, the Constitutional Court (sentence 86/2026) has just pronounced in the opposite direction: illegitimacy continues to follow these buildings, branding them forever with a sort of black mark.

The Constitutional Court's decision concerns a passage of a Sardinian law (Law 18/2025) that limited the interventions allowed on buildings condoned in the three windows of 1985, 1994 and 2003. On these buildings, 'built in contrast with the urban planning regulations' at their origin, in the region 'only ordinary maintenance, extraordinary maintenance, restoration and conservative renovation, and building renovation works are allowed'. Volume increases and demolition with reconstruction and alteration of the outline are not permitted.

This limitation was challenged. The Constitutional Court, however, fully confirmed the correctness of the Sardinian law's approach: the condono is not a title that determines the legitimate status of the property, like any other. It is, instead, 'a measure absolutely extra ordinem and destined to operate una tantum in view of a definitive overcoming of abusive situations. It does not eliminate the genetic unlawfulness of the works and their incompatibility with urban planning provisions, but it acts on the criminal level, making building offences extinct, and on the administrative level, entailing 'the attainment of the amnesty concession (and the extinction of the administrative offence)'. For this reason, the property can be subject to maintenance interventions, to protect its functionality, but "cannot benefit from regulations that recognise building advantages", such as those that award volumetric bonuses at regional and national level.

The 86/2026 ruling makes much more noise because it comes just a few weeks after the Council of State pronouncement that had instead admitted full construction value to condemned buildings. Not only that. The same government included, in the last Budget Law, a rule (Article 1, paragraph 23) that allowed, in specific cases, volumetric increases also for condemned properties. A rule that, according to the Constitutional Court, has the characteristics of a special law and, therefore, has no effect on other situations.

Although the Consulta has set an extremely significant precedent, however, there remains the political will to clarify this situation so full of contrasts. It is understandable, then, why in the proxy bill for building reform, under discussion in the Chamber of Deputies, several majority amendments aim precisely at giving full urban planning dignity to amnestied works. "For the purposes of demonstrating the legitimate status of individual units or buildings, building amnesty applications made in 1985, 1994 and 2003 are included," says an amendment by Forza Italia. While another, again by the Azzurri, hypothesises that 'the building permit in amnesty issued' on the basis of the three amnesties 'shall contribute to the determination of the legitimate state of the building or of the individual building unit'. But similar proposals have also come from Fratelli d'Italia: one of their amendments provides for the express 'inclusion among the elements that determine the legitimate state of both the amnesty titles issued on the basis of the three amnesties' and the payment of fines as an alternative to demolition.