La disciplina tariffaria nel servizio idrico integrato

The author holds that the evaluation of the legislative framework concerning water tariffs, under a legal perspective, should be carried out in compliance with the general economic principles, and points out how this criterion has often been neglected.\r\n\r\nWith specific reference to the current framework concerning water services in Italy, as shaped by the outcome of the referendum held in June 2011, the author deems that the exclusion of any “adequate remuneration” for private capital and the implementation of a system exclusively aimed at covering the costs entail the establishment of a de facto public monopoly in the sector and the obliteration of every potential space for freedom of private economic initiative. This circumstance, beside its institutional peculiarity, produces two significant contradictions. The first one is represented by the situation of the economic players that already performed water services before the referendum: it appears necessary for them to be indemnified for the economic loss deriving from the elimination of private capital’s remuneration, which they were originally granted with the entrustment of the concession. The second drawback is represented by the practical incompatibility between a regime of public monopoly in the sector of water services and the urgent need for massive financial fundings in the sector itself: according to the author, the effective impracticability of the model deriving from the referendum would assume relevance not only under a social or economic point of view, but also under a legal perspective, causing its unlawfulness.