Decision of the week · C.G.A.R.S., 13 July 2026
The Council of Administrative Justice for the Sicilian Region departs from the prevailing case law, and from its own recent judgment No 32/2026: the derogation from the time limit in Article 21-nonies applies only where the falsehood, even where it consists in a mere misrepresentation of fact, has been established in criminal proceedings by a judgment that has become final. A reading that restores strict construction to the provision and foreseeability to the permit.
Sicilian Council of Administrative Justice (C.G.A.R.S.), judicial section, judgment of 13 July 2026, No 478 (case No 528/2024; hearing of 26 March 2026), President de Francisco, Judge-Rapporteur La Ganga, setting aside T.A.R. Sicilia, Catania, First Chamber, No 488/2024. The full text is freely available on the Italian administrative justice portal (in Italian).
The private parties are subject to anonymisation under Article 52 of Legislative Decree No 196/2003. For that reason the judgment is not reproduced here and this commentary contains no details identifying the individuals or the property concerned.
In November 2020 a Sicilian municipality granted a building permit for the demolition and reconstruction of a ruin, allowing the additional volume available under the regional “Piano casa” scheme on the footing that the building had been in residential use. That use was evidenced, in the application, by photographs of an old oven inside the building. The permit was later transferred to a new owner, who filed two variation notices and carried out the works. In 2022, following a complaint by neighbours, the municipality established that the photographs had been altered by digital editing and that the oven shown was in fact located in a different building. In September 2022, well beyond the time limit in Article 21-nonies(1) of Law No 241/1990, it annulled the permit of its own motion and ordered demolition. The Regional Administrative Court dismissed the challenge. The C.G.A. allowed the appeal.
Article 21-nonies(2-bis) of Law No 241/1990 provides that “administrative measures obtained on the basis of misrepresentations of fact, or of false or untruthful statutory declarations and affidavits, as a result of conduct constituting a criminal offence, established by a judgment that has become final, may be annulled by the administration even after expiry of the six-month period referred to in paragraph 1”. That period, originally eighteen months and subsequently twelve, now stands at six.
Everything turns on a question of syntax: what does the phrase “as a result of conduct constituting a criminal offence, established by a judgment that has become final” attach to? To the statutory declarations alone, as the prevailing case law holds, or to both limbs, misrepresentations of fact included?
The Court starts from the text. “As a result of conduct constituting a criminal offence” necessarily qualifies “administrative measures obtained”, because only the obtaining of the measure can be the result of an offence. Misrepresentations of fact, by contrast, are not the result of the offence: they are the conduct that constitutes it. Had the legislature omitted the words “as a result of conduct”, the narrower reading adopted in the case law would have been syntactically available. Since those words were included, the only correct reading is that annulment out of time is permitted solely for measures obtained as a result of criminal conduct established by a final judgment, whether the offence consisted in false statutory declarations or in misrepresentations made to the administration.
False attestation before a public officer carries up to two years' imprisonment under Article 483 of the Criminal Code. A false or untruthful statutory declaration is punished more severely: Article 76 of Presidential Decree No 445/2000 increases the penalty by between one third and one half. It would therefore be incongruous for the legislature to have made the more serious offence conditional on a final criminal conviction while releasing the less serious one from any final determination, dispensing for that limb alone with the requirement of a prior final ruling in criminal proceedings. So read, the scheme would be inherently irrational, with the familiar consequences in terms of reasonableness and equal treatment: hence the constitutionally consistent construction advanced in the judgment.
Italian private law maintains a complex and costly system of land registration whose purpose is to enable any purchaser to know whether he is buying from the true owner. That system, the Court observes, would be drained of meaning if it were not matched by the stability of favourable administrative measures, however unlawful, at least for the benefit of third parties purchasing in good faith and for value, once the statutory time limits have run. This is the sternest passage of the judgment: legislation that has repeatedly narrowed the period for self-redress has been met by a judicial construction that tends to render it all but perpetual. That tension must be resolved by acknowledging, under Article 101(2) of the Constitution, the primacy of the value judgments made by the legislature.
Paragraph 2-bis derogates from a limitation period. As such it calls for strict construction: the derogation applies to the cases the legislature has defined, not to those the interpreter considers deserving. Reading the qualifying phrase as attaching to both limbs does not narrow the protection of the public interest; it anchors that protection to a defined precondition.
Then there is certainty. The alternative formula, under which a misrepresentation is relevant where it has been “unequivocally established by the administration by its own means”, entrusts the precondition for the derogation to a finding made by the very authority with an interest in removing its own measure, on criteria that no provision defines. A final criminal judgment, by contrast, is an objective, dated and verifiable fact, produced in proceedings governed by rules of evidence and rights of defence. The precondition ceases to be an assessment and becomes, once again, a fact.
Finally, foreseeability, which is the decisive point for citizens and businesses. Anyone holding a permit, and still more anyone who has bought from the holder, must be able to know when that permit becomes secure. On the broad reading the answer is indeterminate: six months, unless one day the administration considers that it has itself established a culpable discrepancy. On the C.G.A.'s reading the answer is clear-cut: six months, unless a criminal conviction becomes final. That is the difference between a time limit and an open-ended clause and, in the economics of real property, the difference between a marketable asset and one that nobody can value.
The judgment goes against the tide and says so openly. On a widely held view, a prior criminal determination is not required for misrepresentations of fact: among others, Council of State, Second Chamber, 27 April 2026, No 3265; Fourth Chamber, 14 April 2026, No 2973; Second Chamber, 1 April 2026, No 2665; Second Chamber, 14 January 2025, No 222; Sixth Chamber, 16 October 2024, No 8296; Second Chamber, 25 March 2024, No 2832; Fourth Chamber, 3 April 2024, No 3064; Seventh Chamber, 15 February 2024, No 1535; Second Chamber, 29 March 2023, No 3224. To the same effect within the same court: C.G.A., joint divisions, opinion of 10 March 2026, No 72, and judicial division, 19 January 2026, No 32, from which the present judgment expressly departs, together with C.G.A. 23 July 2024, No 585, and 5 July 2024, No 467, which nonetheless require the administration to carry out a thorough inquiry into the discrepancy, the absence of good faith and the causal weight of the untrue representation. The Constitutional Court, too, in judgment No 88 of 26 June 2025, dismissing challenges to the time limit for self-redress, records that paragraph 2-bis is construed by the administrative courts, on the basis of the disjunctive “or” and a teleological argument, as meaning that the final time limit does not operate wherever the discrepancy between the facts represented and the facts as they are can be laid at the applicant's door.
The practical objection from the majority line should not be underestimated: making self-redress conditional on a final criminal conviction exposes it to the pace of criminal proceedings, to limitation, to discontinuance and to the death of the accused, and may leave standing permits obtained by deception. That is a real cost. But it is a cost which, on the judgment's view, the legislature has already weighed and accepted, both when it enacted the provision and when it shortened the period three times over. And it remains the case, as the judgment makes clear, that if the criminal court establishes the falsehood the administration may revisit the matter without any time limit at all.
It is reasonable to expect the C.G.A. to follow this ruling on the next occasions: the reasoning is complete, and the judgment engages expressly with its own contrary precedent of January 2026 and departs from it on articulated grounds. If that proves so, in Sicily annulment out of time for misrepresentation of fact will require a final criminal conviction, whereas in the rest of Italy an administrative finding will continue to suffice. Two different operative rules would then attach to the same national provision depending on where the property lies, with concrete effects on the security of permits and, indirectly, on property valuations. A divergence of this magnitude within a single administrative jurisdiction has a natural forum for resolution: the Plenary Assembly of the Council of State, to which both the Council of State and the C.G.A. itself may refer the question under Article 99 of the Code of Administrative Procedure.
For Sicilian authorities: once the period in paragraph 1 has run, invoking a misrepresentation of fact no longer suffices to support annulment; a final criminal conviction is required, and in the meantime the ordinary enforcement powers in planning matters remain available on their own terms. For purchasers: the judgment strengthens the position of the third party buying in good faith and for value, but does not remove the need for rigorous documentary checks on the permit and the basis on which it was granted. For those faced with an out-of-time annulment: time to challenge runs under the ordinary rules, and the point must be raised in the proceedings, not afterwards.
Article 21-nonies(1) and (2-bis) of Law No 241/1990; Article 483 of the Criminal Code; Article 76 of Presidential Decree No 445/2000; Article 39 of Presidential Decree No 380/2001; Article 52 of Legislative Decree No 196/2003; Article 99 of the Code of Administrative Procedure; Articles 3, 97 and 101(2) of the Constitution; Constitutional Court, 26 June 2025, No 88.