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Confindustria appreciates that the Government and Parliament have started the discussion on the Annual Market and Competition Bill 2021. Indeed, the revitalisation of this regulatory vehicle, in addition to fulfilling a commitment made in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRP), responds to the needs of efficient market functioning and protection of our socio-economic system, especially in the current emergency phase.
The draft law intervenes in a number of areas that are important for the economy, starting with revisiting the way essential public services are managed; setting up a monitoring system for concessions of public goods; speeding up procedures for building new digital infrastructure; and simplifying administrative regimes and controls on private activities.
The interventions are largely agreeable, although there is no shortage of critical elements, including:
- the need to ensure effective equality of treatment between public and private operators in certain areas, such as healthcare, by providing for transparency requirements that do not create situations of competitive disadvantage for certain operators;
- the need to pay more attention to business investments, also taking into account the current economic situation, by reviewing certain methods of calculating compensation for investments made by outgoing operators, as in the case of natural gas distribution concessions, as well as ensuring the effective protection of investments in innovation, as in the case of equivalent medicines;
- In the antitrust field, the adjustment to the EU principles should be accompanied by a more precise verification of the level playing field in order to avoid regulatory misalignments to the detriment of companies operating in Italy.
