TAR Lazio – Rome, judgment of May 19, 2025, no. 9437. Pres. Stanizzi, Ext. Biffaro.
The Lazio-Rome Regional Administrative Court has upheld the appeal brought by the Rome Bar Association and others for the annulment of point 2.4.2(c) of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility Decree No. 12 of January 17, 2022, on “Adoption of the guidelines for the homogeneous application by the Contracting Stations of the functions of the Technical Advisory Board.”
Specifically, in the aforementioned ruling, the Regional Administrative Court declared the discriminatory and illogical nature of the challenged provision insofar as it excludes attorneys from the free bar among the professionals eligible for the position of Chairman of the Technical Advisory Board, also in light of the constitutional relevance of forensic activity, a corollary of the more general right to defense under Article 24 of the Constitution.
On the merits, the Regional Administrative Court found that the challenged provision unlawfully discriminated by allowing access to the chairmanship of CCTs only to lawyers of the free bar who had acted as chairpersons of commissions for the amicable settlement as well as by equating managers of private law contracting stations with professions marked by a strong functional link with the state-apparatus (such as magistrates, state lawyers and managers of the prefectural career).
The Regional Administrative Court therefore annulled the challenged provision, pointing out the irrationality of the decision to exclude lawyers from the free bar among the professionals eligible to hold the office of President of the CCT also in light of the analogy between this institution and other existing consultative, deflatory and litigation institutions, for which the possibility for lawyers from the free bar to hold the office of President was provided.
As a result, all CCT chairmanships held by Italian lawyers from 2022 to 2024, the year in which Legislative Decree 209/2024 (the so-called “corrective” to the Public Contracts Code) introduced the possibility for lawyers from the free bar to access the chairmanship of CCTs.