So Italy loses almost EUR 110 billion a year to badly written laws

Italy has an impressive number of regulatory texts: there are over 160,000 regulations, whereas in France, Germany and the United Kingdom there are only a few thousand. This legislative excess generates ambiguities, overlaps and difficulties of interpretation. This regulatory confusion considerably slows down the work of public offices and lawyers, who, finding themselves in a situation of uncertainty, proceed with excessive caution or postpone decisions. As jurist Giovanni Pascuzzi points out, laws often 'do not work' because they do not achieve the purposes for which they were conceived: social problems remain unresolved or even worsen. The reason? Ambiguous laws, full of references to other regulations, written with little clarity and unable to clearly convey their purpose. In addition, the overlapping of laws on the same subject, passed at close intervals, reduces the overall effectiveness, because a law needs time and space to take effect.

A study quoted by Lavoce (signed by Tommaso Giommoni, Luigi Guiso, Claudio Michelacci and Massimo Morelli) shows that if Italian laws were written as clearly as the Constitution, the national GDP would increase by about 5 per cent, or almost EUR 110 billion per year. This estimate, dating back to early August 2025, quantifies in macro terms the negative impact of poor regulatory clarity. Even more recently, a group of economists estimated the cost of long, convoluted and difficult to interpret sentences: the result is a significant figure, described by the very title of the article as 'many billions' lost due to poorly written laws. Although no further numerical details are provided, the lexical outfit ('many billions') compensates for the macronumerical figure, reinforcing the concept of a serious but often invisible economic loss. A 'hidden cost' for business and country due to unclear laws, emphasising how these make interpretation and thus compliance difficult. Poorly written laws not only penalise the economy, but also undermine trust in institutions - fuelling corruption, bribery and inefficiency. When a regulatory text is obscure or contradictory, it can create fertile ground for arbitrary or opportunistic interpretations

A proposal put forward by the Parliament (albeit in 2021) aims to establish a commission to better explain the laws passed, summarising and clarifying them in a simple and clear manner, a commission that would summarise and clarify the often incomprehensible texts passed, a first concrete step towards greater regulatory transparency. In Spain, Magistrate Gloria Poyatos of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands made a symbolic and effective gesture: she rewrote a sentence in such language that even a 10-year-old child could understand it, demonstrating that simplification is possible and effective. The inordinate amount of regulations, often contradictory or badly written, complicates the operating field of public and private actors. Ambiguous laws contribute to a disconnect between stated objectives and concrete results, thwarting the legislative impact. The overall economic cost is estimated at around EUR 110 billion per year in terms of potential GDP alone, in addition to additional economic losses due to lack of individual understanding. Regulatory disorder fuels inefficiencies and risks closely linked to governance and public trust. There are reform strategies, such as simplification commissions and practical cases of clear language in applied law, that can serve as models for a renewed regulatory culture.