Osborne Clarke advised Gandovere Depurazione S.r.l. - manager of the wastewater purification service operating in favour of the two operators of the integrated water service present in the province of Brescia - in the appeal brought before the Lombardy Regional Administrative Court, aimed at the annulment of the resolution adopted by ARERA (no. 477/2023/R/IDR of 17 October 2023), in the part in which the Company was excluded from the recognition of the incentive for the technical quality of the Integrated Water Service in the years 2020-2021.

The Lombardy Regional Administrative Court, with decision no. 2860 of 23 October 2024, in providing the first decision on the matter, fully accepted the objections formulated by Gandovere Depurazione S.r.l., annulling ARERA's resolution and, as a result, allowing the Company to access the relative bonus.
In particular, the Administrative Judge ruled that the reasons underlying the Company's exclusion from the incentives were unfounded, confirming, among other things, how the Authority cannot interpret extensively (and to the detriment of water service operators) the specific regulatory provisions relating to specifically typified cases of exclusion.

In particular, the Court clarified that it is not possible to include - contrary to what was unlawfully established by ARERA - the late sending (beyond the deadline set by ARERA of 30 April 2022) of the MTI-2 update tariff preparation data, in the exclusionary case relating to the late sending ‘of the RQTI data’, since according to the regulatory framework, the sending of the update tariff preparation data later than 30 April 2022 does not fall expressly among the conducts ascribable to the exclusionary case applied to Gandovere. Therefore, ‘the case of the alleged late sending of the tariff updating data (after 30 April 2022) has nothing to do with the typical exclusion case referred to in the contested measure’.

Osborne Clarke acted with partner Giorgio Lezzi and associate Federico Milani.

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