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Aldo Sandulli
The italian administrative procedure act: back to the future
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Were one to ask any Italian
academic which piece of Italian legislation is currently the most important for
administrative law, the reply would invariably be the law on administrative
procedure (Law no. 241 of 1990).
From its very beginnings, Law
no. 241 of 1990 has occupied a special place in the Italian legislative
terrain. Indeed, it is the fruit of the work carried out by a commission of
academics appointed in 1979 by the then Minister for the Civil Service, Massimo
Severo Giannini, and presided over by Mario Nigro (two of the greatest
professors of administrative law active during the second half of the twentieth
century). Thus Law no. 241 was the product of the intellectual ambition of a
narrow circle of academics. Basing their work not only on the consolidated line
of administrative case-law but also on comparative legal research, they
introduced the principles of participation, simplification and transparency:
consider, for example the rules on timeframes and the officer responsible for
procedures, as well as those governing agreements, the conference of services
(a meeting of the representatives of the various public bodies involved in a procedure,
who discuss possible solutions and take a decision by way of a majority of
those present), communication of the commencement of a procedure and access to
administrative documents.