With its ruling no. 447 of 14 October 2025, the Abruzzo Regional Administrative Court clarified a fundamental aspect concerning the appealability of authorisations – and more – issued by the competent authorities for the construction and operation of renewable energy production plants.
In the context of a simplified judgment, the Court took the opportunity to clarify that, for the purposes of lodging an appeal before the administrative courts, the publication of a decision in the Regional Official Bulletin does not deprive the previous individual notification of the same decision, guaranteed by digital communication pursuant to Article 47 of the Digital Administration Code and Article 14 bis of Law No. 241/1990, which is decisive for achieving “full knowledge” of the decision and, consequently, for the start of the time limit for challenging it.
In the case in question, following the opposition to the hearing of the extraordinary appeal filed by the other party, the Court, thus moving on to the decision on the appeal in court, declared inadmissible the extraordinary appeal to the President of the Republic filed by the Municipality of Corropoli (TE), notified on 18 July 2025, for the annulment of the single authorisation issued by the Abruzzo Region for the construction and operation of a plant for the production of electricity from renewable sources and the related connection works.
However, the decision containing the aforementioned single authorisation had been notified via certified email to the proponent and the Municipality of Corropoli (TE) on 3 March 2025, the date from which, according to the panel of judges, the appellant had full knowledge of the decision in question and, therefore, the starting date for the 120-day period provided for the appeal to the President of the Republic, pursuant to Article 9, paragraph 1, of Presidential Decree No. 1199 of 24 November 1971, according to which “the appeal must be lodged within 120 days of the date of notification or communication of the contested act or from when the interested party became fully aware of it”.
For the appellant body, therefore, the subsequent publication of the decision in the BURAT is irrelevant, not least in terms of postponing the starting date for the submission of the appeal to the President of the Republic for the annulment of the single authorisation: the Court therefore specifies that this publication does not supersede the previous certified email communication through which the Municipality of Corropoli (TE) had already been made aware of the harmful nature of the contested measure, as well as the reasons underlying its adoption.
The time limit for appealing, starting from the date of publication of the measure in the BUR, therefore applies only to entities or interested parties who have not already received notification of the measure itself. However, the principle set out in Article 41 of the Code of Administrative Procedure remains valid for all parties (public and private) who have received notification, according to which “the appeal must be notified, under penalty of forfeiture, to the public administration that issued the contested act [...] within the time limit provided for by law, starting from the notification, communication or full knowledge, or, for acts that do not require individual notification, from the day on which the publication deadline expired, if this is provided for by law or based on the law”.
Written by Giovanni Battista De Luca, Lorenzo Piscitelli and Elisa Tunno.
