Article 26 of Law No. 118/2022 prescribes that, within the twenty-four months following the entry into force of the Law, the Government shall adopt one or more Legislative Decrees in order to firstly recognise and identify the economic activities subject to Certified Activity Commencement Reporting ("Segnalazione Certificata di Inizio Attività"), activities requiring authorisation and those subject to simple communication. It should be noted that an initial identification of the economic activities' administrative regimes has already been carried out by Legislative Decree 222/2016 (under Law 124/2015) that will have to be reviewed in light of the new delegation.
Compared to the 2015 enabling act, the aim today is broader: in addition to identifying the administrative regimes of the economic activities, the delegated decrees will also have to simplify the substantive regulations governing these activities. In fact, the criteria for exercising the delegated power include the need to reduce the administrative burdens on citizens and businesses, for example by eliminating authorisation measures and fulfilments that affect the freedom of economic initiative if they are not indispensable or not required by European legislation. Also with the aim of simplification, it is planned to repeal the framework on economic activities that introduce higher levels of regulation than the minimum necessary to comply with EU legislation.
The delegating legislator also considered the timing of administrative procedures: the enabling act provides for the reduction of the time required for authorisation procedures for the start-up of business activities and, more generally, the halving of the time required for the conclusion of administrative procedures, without prejudice to the possibility of identifying exceptions to this redefinition. The procedural stages and the offices involved in the procedures themselves are also reduced, with the provision that the processing times of the procedures, and the related level of user satisfaction, should constitute one of the evaluation criteria for the Administration's individual and organisational performance.
In order to assess the actual impact of the reform on the economic system, it will be necessary to wait for the decrees that the (by now, new) Government will adopt in execution of the enabling act. However, the intention to simplify not only the administrative procedure in itself, but also the 'underlying' framework, whose complexity and fragmentary nature is often the cause of the excessive duration of proceedings and the uncertainty of their outcome, is certainly positive.