The confusion related to incentives for companies is finally over. The Council of Ministers has approved, as a matter of urgency, a bill revising the whole system, which, in the future, will be regulated by the Incentives Code.
Within twenty-four months from the date of entry into force of the law, the Government must adopt one or more legislative decrees for the definition of a comprehensive framework for the activation of public support through incentives to companies, in order to rationalise and simplify aid and reduce the time and cost of applications.
According to the latest 2021 survey, the national preferential system has recorded a large number of measures unrelated to each other: 1,982 facilitative interventions, 229 from the central government and 1,753 from regional administrations.
The new rules introduce, among other things, the following guiding principles for incentive measures:
- planning of the interventions by each administration and indication of their temporal extension, which can also be multi-year, in order to ensure a continuous and adequate support to the established purposes;
- measurability of the economic impact covered by the incentives, based on the ongoing and ex post evaluation of the effects obtained;
- strengthening social, economic and territorial cohesion for a harmonious and balanced economic development of the nation, with particular reference to policies to stimulate the productive base of Southern Italy;
- enhancing the contribution of women to the economic and social growth of the nation.
Regulatory interventions should allow:
- the rationalisation of the offer of incentives, through the identification of a limited and defined set of preferential models;
- the codification of the procedural rules concerning incentives to companies, which will be harmonised and coordinated in an “Incentives Code”.
The measure aims to facilitate the digitisation and simplicity of incentivisation procedures, and also to improve the coordination of existing instruments, such as the National Register of State Aid (RNA) and the telematic platform "incentivi.gov.it".