Administrative law is the part of the Italian system Americans meet without expecting to. You buy a building and the heritage office objects to the windows. You bid for a public contract and lose to an offer that should have been disqualified. You apply for an authorisation and receive nothing at all for a year. These are not commercial disputes and they do not go to the ordinary courts: they go to the TAR, the regional administrative court, on a timetable that is unforgiving of delay.
The sixty-day rule, and why it ends most cases before they start
An administrative act is challenged before the TAR within sixty days of notice or knowledge of it. That period is a forfeiture term: miss it and the act becomes definitive, however unlawful it was. For a foreign client the sixty days typically start running while the document is still sitting unread in Italian, which is why we are usually called too late.
There are shorter tracks and longer ones — public procurement runs on thirty days, and silence by the administration follows its own rules — so the very first thing we do on any file is fix the deadline in writing.
- Sixty days to appeal an administrative act to the TAR
- Thirty days in public procurement disputes
- Silence of the administration: action available once the legal time limit has passed
- Suspension (sospensiva) available in days where the harm is serious and irreparable
- Appeal to the Consiglio di Stato against the TAR judgment
Permits, authorisations and the offices that can stop a project
Most projects stall not on the building permit itself but on the consents around it. A property under landscape or heritage constraint needs the authorisation of the Soprintendenza, which can refuse or impose conditions that change the economics of a renovation entirely. Environmental, seismic and fire-safety consents each add their own authority and their own timetable.
We map the consents a project actually requires before work begins, deal with the offices, and challenge refusals and conditions that are unlawful or disproportionate — which they frequently are.
- Building permits, SCIA and CILA, and orders to demolish or restore
- Landscape and heritage authorisations, and refusals by the Soprintendenza
- Environmental assessments and authorisations
- Change of use, zoning and planning instruments
- Amnesties (condono, sanatoria) and their refusal
- Occupation and expropriation of land by public authorities
Public tenders and contracts
Italian and EU procurement rules give an unsuccessful bidder real remedies, and they work — provided they are used at once. Exclusion of a competitor who should never have qualified, an anomalous offer accepted without proper verification, evaluation criteria applied inconsistently: all are challengeable, and the court can annul the award and, in defined cases, order the contract to be given to you instead.
We advise US companies bidding into the Italian market, including through Italian subsidiaries and consortia, and act both for challengers and for defending an award already obtained.
Sanctions, revocations and foreign investment screening
Administrative sanctions against a company — from a regulator, an inspectorate or a local authority — carry their own appeal routes and deadlines, distinct from criminal proceedings that may run in parallel. Licences and concessions can be suspended or revoked, and the revocation is itself an act that can be challenged.
A point that catches US investors specifically: Italy applies golden power screening to acquisitions in strategic sectors — energy, telecommunications, transport, defence, health, critical technologies. Notification is mandatory, the deadlines are short, and failure to notify can void the transaction and attract heavy fines. We assess whether a deal falls in scope before it is signed, not after.
- Administrative sanctions on companies and their appeal
- Suspension and revocation of licences and concessions
- Golden power notifications and conditions imposed on a deal
- Access to administrative records — the right to see the file
- Public funding, incentives and their withdrawal
- Claims against a public authority for unlawful conduct
Questions we are asked about this
I received an Italian administrative decision I do not understand. What do I do first?
Send it to us the day it arrives, before translating anything. The sixty-day term usually starts from notice, and the first thing that matters is establishing exactly when it started.
The comune has never answered my application. Can I do anything?
Yes. Silence by the administration is itself actionable once the statutory time limit has passed: the court can order the authority to decide and, in some cases, rule on the substance.
Can I get the decision suspended while the case runs?
Often, yes. Where the harm is serious and irreparable the TAR can suspend the act within days of the application. It is one of the reasons that acting immediately matters more here than anywhere else in Italian procedure.