Decision of the week · Procurement · 13 July 2026
TAR Sicily, Catania, Second Chamber, judgment of 13 July 2026, no. 2038
TAR Sicilia, Catania, sez. II, sent. 13 luglio 2026, n. 2038
Official document published by the Italian administrative justice portal, freely accessible (in Italian).
By judgment no. 2038 of 13 July 2026, the Second Chamber of the Catania Administrative Court (TAR) dismissed as time-barred a claim by a contractor seeking about EUR 15,700 from a municipality in the Etna area as compensation for the exceptional increase in construction material prices in 2021, under Article 1-septies of Decree-Law no. 73/2021. The merits were never reached: the case was decided by the legal characterisation of a note from the RUP (the contracting authority’s project manager) and by the true weight of the certificate of proper performance.
During the works, the contractor filed two compensation claims. The works director calculated the amounts due, and the certificate of proper performance, signed by the RUP and the works director, recorded that “the contracting authority will see to the payment of the compensation requested”. The RUP then informed the contractor that the claim could not be entered into the ministerial platform because it lacked the required attachments. The contractor issued an invoice, which the authority rejected; it obtained a payment order from the civil courts, but the Tribunal declined jurisdiction in favour of the administrative courts. When the case was resumed before the TAR, the claim was dismissed as inadmissible for lateness, with costs.
For the Court, the RUP’s communication was neither an internal procedural step nor a mere report of technical difficulties: it amounted to a refusal or, at the very least, a decision halting the procedure, immediately and directly harming the contractor’s interest in a positive outcome. No sacramental formulas of rejection are needed: what characterises the act are its substantive effects, namely that it barred any further progress of the procedure. It followed that the note had to be challenged within the 60-day limitation period; once that period expired, the act became final and no later challenge was possible, even after the case reached the administrative courts through a transfer of jurisdiction.
The second principle concerns the often overestimated weight of technical documents. The certificate of proper performance attests that the works were correctly executed: it is neither an autonomous spending title nor a negotiated declaration of intent capable of financially binding the authority. Together with the works director’s calculations, it is an internal, technical and preparatory act, incapable of amounting to an acknowledgement of debt under Article 1988 of the Civil Code. The payment obligation arises only with an express decision of the competent body approving the calculations and committing the corresponding expenditure.
For companies the rule is simple: every communication from a contracting authority, even the most seemingly harmless, should be assessed at once for its substantive significance. If the note can be read as a conclusive expression of the authority’s will, or as a decision halting the procedure, the time limit for challenging it before the administrative courts, generally 60 days, runs regardless, on pain of the act becoming final. And reassurances contained in technical documents are no substitute for a formal decision: until the competent body has approved the calculations and committed the expenditure, that debt does not yet exist for the administration.