There Milanese affair which in these days is monopolizing the public debate, with over 70 suspects and 6 requests for precautionary measure in the context of the investigation into theurban planning CITIZEN – Investigation that laps the mayor, the Department of urban regenerationinternationally renowned professionals and the same Municipal Commission for the landscape – imposes a organic rethinking from the appointment procedures of the members of all Consultative technical bodies on construction and territorial matters.
The fragility of the current structure, which emerged in chat and in the crossed relationships with the private operators described by the investigators, it reveals not only a criminally relevant problem, but above all a vulnus institutional: the permeability of these commissions to interference of local politics and to the speculative drives of the real estate market, with consequent fogging of the principle of impartiality that theart. 97 Cost. requires the administration.
On closer inspection, the regulatory architecture that supervises these appointments remains anchored to schemes developed in an era in which urban transformation possessed a marginal weight compared to today’s one.
There Urban planning law of 1942albeit several times novelty, does not offer stringent criteria; The DPR 380/2001 He gives up on the municipal building regulations the punctual discipline; The Legislative Decree 42/2004 In landscape matters entrusts the choice of commissioners to the Mayor or the President of the Province without providing for real substantial filters. The Legislative Decree 39/2013which introduced the regime of irrefitability And incompatibilityapplies only to a limited list of apical positions and is silent about the technical figures called to express opinions that, in fact, affect the redistribution of huge landing.
The absence of an explicit prohibition of practicing the profession in the territory for which the commissioner formula the opinions represents the most critical point, because it allows the rooting of a physiological conflict of interest latent, nourished by the natural trend of each professional to maintain relationships with private clients in the same context in which he evaluates projects and variants.
Nor the Soft Law It is so far enough to fill this gap.
The National anti -corruption planin the update approved by theAnac In January 2025, he dedicates an entire chapter to the management of conflicts of interest and urges more stringent measures, but his indications, without immediate coaching, are applied to a leopard spot: alongside virtuous municipal regulations survive opaque practices, while the mechanism of self -certification provided for byart. 15 of Legislative Decree 39/2013 It is inadequate when the relationships between commissioners and economic operators blend in the figure of the “trusted” consultant. The same Milanese commissiontwo months before the explosion of the investigation, he had updated his regulation by introducing greater advertising of the sessions e rotation of assignmentsa sign of a widespread but, unfortunately, late awareness.
Just to arm theindependence of the technical organs, the establishment of a national register of urban and landscape commissionersmanaged byAnac and powered exclusively through a public draw Certified telematic.
The state legislator, by virtue of theart. 117, second paragraph, lett. l) Cost. (civil system) and ofart. 117, third paragraph (professions), could introduce a centralized system of accreditation that, burning with the National Database of Public Contractsmonitors in real time i Conflicts of interestthe previous disciplinary and previous assignments of the candidates. Random extraction would guarantee rotation, impartiality And auditable traceabilitywhile the forecast of temporal windows for the return to the profession would avoid the effect freezing of private careers. In this way, the governance of urban transformations would be subtracted from local clientele logics and realized at Best Practice international, such as those referred to by opinion 2024/6 of the Venice Commission on the prevention of corruption in subnational decision -making processes.
Alongside this national mechanism, the entire plant of theirrefitabilityintroducing a robust Cooling -off territorial: Those who accept to sit in the Commission should commit themselves not to carry out professional activity, neither directly nor by interposed person, in the province or in the region of competence for at least three years, both during the mandate and in the following three years. A similar measure, far from being a disproportionate sacrifice, constitutes the domestic transposition ofart. 24 of the Directive 2014/24/EUwhich obliges Member States to prevent situations in which financial or personal interests can compromise the impartiality of decision -making bodies.
In parallel, the appointment should be tied to transparent comparative proceduresthe agenda of the sessions published in advance and the opinions made fully accessible in format open dataovercoming the culture of the reserved act that has favored opacity and improper interlocutions between politics and professions.
Such a reformer design not only regenerate the credibility of local institutions, but strengthens the legal certainty For economic operators: the current “Save -Milan decree”who tries ex post to unlock paralyzed construction sites through an authentic interpretation of theart. 41 of the urban planning lawdemonstrates how expensive a decision -making system is that jams when suspects of collusion emerge.
If you want to prevent the intervention of the judiciary, fulfill public and private investments for months, with direct repercussions on citizens pending residential construction, services and infrastructures, it is necessary to institutionalize the rules of appointment capable of guaranteeing upstream independence, professionalism and absence of private incentives. Only in this way can the opinion of the commissions return to being what the legislator had imagined: a tool for the protection of thecollective interest and not the crossroads in which balances between political power And Real estate annuities.