After years of regulatory chaos, Rome is finally writing the rules. The question is: who will they favor?
In recent months, what could be remembered as a watershed moment for Italian digital infrastructure has opened up: Parliament has addressed a bill that finally attempts to give data centers their own regulatory status, removing them from the shadow of labels like “industrial facility” or “generic infrastructure project” and, as far as we’re concerned, recognizing their strategic essence for the national Internet ecosystem.
Bill C. 1928, delegating the Government to organize, strengthen and technologically develop “data processing centers,” aims to fill a regulatory void that has become unsustainable: Italy is increasingly attractive to investors thanks to its central position in the Mediterranean, the push from cloud services and AI, but local constraints and bureaucracy risk causing us to miss opportunities. According to the Politecnico di Milano observatory, investments in the sector are estimated at over 15 billion euros in the 2023-2025 three-year period, a considerable figure.
To understand the urgency, one need only look at the Data4 case from ten years ago: municipal technicians found themselves without regulatory references and had to creatively adapt rules from other sectors. Today, after over a hundred data centers built, the problem persists.
The lack of regulations has created a paradox: most investments have concentrated in Lombardy, the only region with specific guidelines. Sherif Rizkalla, president of IDA (Italian Datacenter Association), emphasized: “In Lombardy you can obtain building permits and environmental authorizations in one year; in Rome it takes up to four or five years. We can invest in the North faster than elsewhere. We’re pushing with institutions to have a simple, fast and transparent regulatory framework.”
In the text approved by the Transport and Telecommunications Committee, signed by representatives Pastorella, Centemero, Amich C., Ascani and Iaria, the data center is defined as a physical structure within which machines, connectivity, storage and digital services operate. The legislator intends to delegate to the Government the adoption, within six months, of decrees that establish a dedicated ATECO code, simplified authorization procedures, security requirements, priority connection to the electrical grid and environmental criteria. It’s an attempt to standardize what has remained inconsistent across the territory thus far.
Meanwhile, MASE is working on the “Energy Decree” with already operational regulations: a single procedure to authorize new data centers and expansions, recognizing them as strategic infrastructures and with ARERA involved in regulating electrical connections. In the draft, data centers are classified according to a dimensional scale from hyperscale to micro-edge, envisioning a future made not only of large campuses, but also of infrastructures close to the end user.
The difference, as always, will be made by the implementing decrees. If the single procedure remains abstract and local authorities maintain discretion, we’ll return to the usual bureaucratic jungle, and if timelines aren’t binding, a single delay will be enough to block projects.
The crucial bottleneck, as will have become clear, is energy: authorization alone is useless if the grid doesn’t have residual capacity. The decrees must provide funds to strengthen lines and interconnections. The very issue of costs has already caused a halt in the Chamber: the current text provides for public incentives without financial coverage. Hence the need to amend, as explained by Representative Giulia Pastorella in an interview with the Namex Observatory.
Mandatory KPIs are needed, PUE, emission limits, water consumption, heat recovery, otherwise sustainability remains rhetoric. European regulations must also be referenced from the start: cybersecurity, interoperability, NIS2, to avoid regulatory gray areas.
The debate on the bill has revealed a split in the ecosystem.
The major builders and international investors, represented by IDA, are pushing for this legislation, highlighting how the absence of rules hinders multi-billion investments. “Investors do the math quickly: if the lack of national regulations wastes time, they turn to other countries,” Pastorella declared. “We’re in competition with Europe and we can’t afford to miss opportunities. This isn’t a sector that needs aid and money, but needs investment to be facilitated.” For IDA, southern Italy has enormous potential, spaces to convert, renewable energy, Mediterranean connectivity, but everything remains constrained by the absence of regulations.
On the opposite front, AIIP, the Italian Internet Service Providers Association, expresses concerns that simplified procedures and privileged status could primarily favor international hyperscalers, marginalizing Italian operators. Antonio Baldassarra, CEO of Seeweb, framed the issue in stark terms: consumption of land and energy with significant costs for the community in exchange for few jobs created, exemptions that risk discrimination and marginalization of Italian technology companies in favor of global giants. “Italian tech companies have been operating in damage limitation mode for years, indeed decades,” he said, adding: “Now we’ve decided to favor the new ‘technology property developers’ with the aggravating factor that they’re no longer even Roman.”
It’s a crucial debate: how to prevent simplification from only favoring those with substantial resources? How to ensure that Italian operators, who built the country’s infrastructure, aren’t penalized? The real challenge will be writing implementing decrees that are neither protectionist nor biased toward major players. A resilient ecosystem must include both international hyperscalers and Italian operators of even small dimensions. They will be the main players in edge data centers.
In this context, Namex’s position is clear. CEO Maurizio Goretti emphasized: “I’ve realized, in these recent months of intense meetings and travels, that our country is experiencing a probably historic moment for the growth of its Internet ecosystem. Italy is finally equipping itself with infrastructure worthy of the most important European countries and is doing so with characteristics that enhance its prerogatives: a country that serves as a crossroads at the center of the Mediterranean.” And further: “The need for low latency for certain applications and the use of Edge Cloud is pushing toward edge data centers. A new and more important role is emerging for IXPs, which will increasingly become Edge — that is, widespread and close to the end user.”
If the legislator can synthesize effectively, Italy can become a competitive digital hub of the Mediterranean. At stake is not only the sector’s growth, but the possibility of making Italy a central node between European Internet and that of Africa and the Middle East.
— By Christian Cinetto, Head of Communication and Content at Namex
