Testo Unico Ambientale, Environmental-Impact Screening and Assessment
In forceEffective 2006-08-12 · Applies to both
A project listed in the decree's Allegati II, II-bis, III or IV must go through environmental assessment before it can be approved, authorised, sited or built: Article 6, comma 2, letter a) ties the strategic environmental assessment (VAS) requirement for plans and programmes covering, among other sectors, energy, industry and telecommunications, to projects listed in those annexes, and the parallel project-level Valutazione di Impatto Ambientale (VIA) procedure in Titolo III follows the same annex-based scope.
Where a screening rather than a full VIA applies, Article 19 sets the procedure. The proponent submits a preliminary environmental study electronically, in the format set by Allegato IV-bis, with proof of the Article 33 fee (comma 1).
The competent authority checks completeness within five days and may ask once for clarifications, on pain of the application being deemed refused if the proponent misses the fifteen-day deadline to respond (comma 2); it then publishes the study on its own website, notifies potentially interested administrations and territorial bodies (comma 3), and gives any interested party thirty days from that publication to submit observations (comma 4).
The authority may, once, ask the proponent within fifteen days of that deadline for further clarifications aimed at avoiding a full VIA, giving up to thirty days to respond, again on pain of deemed refusal (comma 6). The authority must adopt its screening decision within sixty days of the observation deadline, or within forty-five days of receiving the requested clarifications (comma 6-bis).
This procedural timeline, most recently amended in 2024, applies to any project meeting an Allegato threshold, including a large civil-engineering or industrial installation; whether an annex names data centres specifically is not established here.
Source: Full text of law