Salva casa, for CGIL risk of amnesties granted without controls

The new rules on consent silence are back at the centre of the debate on the Save House Decree. Yesterday there was a new day of hearings in the Environment Committee of the Chamber on the law converting decree no. 69/2024 (rapporteur Dario Iaia, Fdi): among the many unions present all day in Montecitorio, the trade unions commented on the text.

And they raised various perplexities and critical points. The national CGIL and Fillea CGIL, for example, emphasised that 'silence of consent, which replaces silence of denial, is unthinkable for municipalities if it is tied to the 45-day deadline'. The desire for streamlining, present in the decree, 'should not lead to the opening of new building procedures that will be a burden for the municipalities and that, in all likelihood, will be accepted automatically, given the objective impossibility of verification'. The speed of the times could, then, translate into an absence of controls.
Although the desire to simplify building and urban planning is 'positively evaluated', then, other elements of detail are likely to bring an aggravation. "A further difficulty for municipalities may be represented by the form of sanctions, which, if linked to the increase in the market value, may be difficult to enforce. Municipalities are likely to apply the minimum, resulting in less revenue'. Above all, however, say the CGIL, 'we expected measures capable of relaunching public housing and a rental market at sustainable costs, now a real emergency for the country, which we do not find in the decree'.

Uil's position is harsh, according to which 'we are faced with a decree that is moving towards a mini amnesty'. For this reason, 'we hope it will not lead to real amnesties of more serious abuses'. In particular, 'the possibility of changing the intended use of buildings is worrying, as we risk a desertification of historic centres. We would not want to be faced with an explosion of tourist, commercial and office residences, some of which have already taken place, without even respecting the planned urban standards'.
For Uil, 'if the purpose of the decree was, in addition to urban planning simplification, to revive the real estate market and allow for building recovery and regeneration, we are faced with yet another wasted opportunity. We need to refinance the fund in support of rents and incolpevole delinquency, now almost definitively defunded, with an endowment of only EUR 7.6 million for each of the years 2024-2025: totally insufficient resources to address the issues at stake".

Finally, Cisl questions the urban planning impact that the measures in the decree will have in the long term. Thus, it calls for a comprehensive update of the Consolidated Building Act, which has been under discussion for years, and the long-awaited framework law on urban regeneration.