The expropriation is a legal procedure used by the Italian State, or by other public bodies, for the realization of public works or, more generally, to meet public utility needs. It represents the way in which the state becomes the owner of something not his and can indiscriminately concern any property in the area and is regulated by specific articles of the Constitution.
The consideration that the State makes available to remedy the debt contract is called compensationand can be the subject of discussion between the expropriating body and the expropriated. Let’s see together what are the limits of the express and what are the technical and legal procedures.
What is expropriation
Expropriating a land or property can be enclosed, in an example, such as the legal procedure for which the state becomes the owner of an asset that is not, in the start of starting. We can think of expropriation as a sales negotiation, in which, however, neither the price nor the will to sell are decided by the seller, but by the buyer, who is precisely the state. In this meaning, the expropriation is therefore an authoritative procedure. The asset that must be yielded will be the subject of economic evaluation, so the state will make a specific economic proposal of acquisition, called compensation.
The concept of expropriation can be found in full within the Italian Constitution, in particular in article 42, which outlines the concept of property and establishes under which limits it can be exercised. In fact, the same article defines that, for reasons of general interest, the State can become the right owner of an asset not his. There is also a further regulatory reference that regulates this field, namely Presidential Decree 327/2001, also known as the Consolidated Law expropriation.
The expropriation, among other things, can only take place in relation to areas that are subjected to the so -called “pre -ordered constraint at apoprio”, which has a duration of 5 years.
How to decide compensation
Compensation It is nothing more than the economic compensation relating to the expropriation procedure. However, compensation is not always equivalent to the actual market value of the expropriated asset. In general, the sum is estimated with different procedures depending on whether it is a building soil, not building or a real property already made. In the latter case, we can also refer to the commercial values of the property and market prices, as well as to the profitability of the property.
Although the evaluation is made by a technician who works on behalf of the State – such as a CTU (i.e. a technical consultant for office), the owner of the property can accept the economic sum or proceed towards his own value and, in extreme cases, go to an appeal to have greater compensation or completely avoid the expropriation procedure, if for this there are no technical bases.
What are the non -expropriation assets
Not everything we have around can be expropriated by the state. The Constitution, in fact, clearly defines the existence of some non -expropriable assets, namely:
- Those belonging to the public state property, as they already belong to the state and already with a intended use of general interest.
- Those burdened by civic use, that is, properties bound to traditional use that aims to satisfy essential needs of the community.
- Those already belonging to other public bodies, unless the intended use of future use is in a certain sense of greater importance than that for which the asset was used previously.
- Those owned by the Holy See or, in general, all places of worship.
How expropriation works in the world
The expropriation procedure has a similar process all over the world, even outside Italy. In the countries of the European Union, the expropriation is regulated in a more specific way at national level, although this same must continue to respect all the principles established by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Nonetheless, in the world it does not always work as in Europe: there are countries where the expropriation approach is more authoritarian and centralized: the concept of ownership has different application features from those we are used to in European countries. In this context, cases of expropriation may also happen for which there is no compensation against the expropriated.
