Partitions, windows, verandas: what could be included in the home amnesty

Niches, partitions, mezzanines, verandas, windows. In general, small portions of real estate that do not appear in the building titles in the municipality, but which have existed for years and which, therefore, it is more logical to sanction. The days pass, but the objectives of the manoeuvre being studied by the offices of the Ministry of Infrastructure do not change. The text, meanwhile, is travelling towards the Council of Ministers next week, according to deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini . Who, intercepting the concerns leaking out from Palazzo Chigi, reiterates the nature of the measure: "The decree," he says in the studios of Agorà, "is not an amnesty.

Prime Minister Meloni's concern is that in the run-up to the elections the measure could be perceived as a 'free-for-all' amnesty, and she has asked the deputy prime minister for reassurances on this in recent days. There is not yet a text, the offices are still working on it in search of an agreement on the most delicate aspects. But the intention is to bring it, together with other measures, to the Council of Ministers on 22 May, which has been postponed precisely in order to finalise the last details.

"The majority of Italians' houses have small internal problems: the bathroom, the window, the veranda, the loft. Millions of Italians' houses are blocked by bureaucracy, our goal is to rectify these small internal irregularities. If one has a villa with a swimming pool or two extra floors, the answer is to tear it down, but if one has eight square metres of a small room made by one's grandfather 30 years ago, it is right that one can go to the municipality: pay and peacefully become the owner of the property again,' Salvini explained.

Coming down to the merits, the case-saving moves on three increasing levels of irregularity. The first case concerns problems of a formal nature. These are usually errors of representation in the project that were corrected at the time of execution on site and therefore create a misalignment between the authorised project and the reality of the buildings. For works carried out before 1977, there was no possibility of making variations during construction, so these changes were never corrected. Two examples: a window that was on the project and then not realised or a cornice that was 30 centimetres but in reality is half a metre.

The second case concerns internal discrepancies that are not merely formal. The practical cases may be different. Before 1977, when a building project was made, plans of everything were not submitted, but a 'standard plan' was sufficient. Then, during the realisation of the buildings, certain elements were modified. These modifications today are as many discrepancies. Added to this is the case, which is also frequent, of internal changes made over the decades (and perhaps not always declared), with the effect of layering elements upon elements that are difficult to justify today. These interventions also become sanctionable.