Brevi note sulla qualificazione giuridica dei beni costituenti la rete ferroviaria

The paper synthetically describes how Italian courts and scholars interpreted the legal transformations occurred to the railway market, and notably to the rail-network infrastructure components property regulation, since the end of the twentieth century. The authors contest the (prevailing) opinion assuming a substantial continuity between the current stage of regulation and the regime of public property provided by 1942 civil code; they show the reasons why, on the contrary, the rail-network components have to be considered as goods subject to private property law both on the formal and the substantial floor. For this purpose, the paper emphasize how the public interests aimed by the previously in force law scheme are radically different from the interests at present representing rationes of the services of general economic interest's special regulation.