L’ampio potere di regolazione dell’Autorità indipendente dei trasporti nel settore ferroviario

The wide regulatory power of the Independent Transport Authority on the railway sector The National Independent Authority for Transport, imposed by European Law and established in Italy in 2013, is characterized by using wide powers of control, regulation and sanction, which cover all transport sectors. Regulatory competences seem in particular to interfere, in some areas, with the functions, also of political direction, of the State, Regional and Local Government, as well as the competences of the other administrative independent bodies such as the National Antitrust Authority or National Anti-Corruption Authority. This requires the provision of forms of coordination and cooperation beetwen those authorities, waiting for a clear actio finium regundorum by the national legislator, in order to avoid risks of conflicts between the activities of the various authorities or the adoption of contradictory or misaligned decisions and measures on the same issues. The paper will give a general outline of this type of independent regulation and the several public interests assigned to the Transport Authority, and, in particular, it will focus the attention on many regulatory competences of the Transport Authority on the railway sector, recently extended by the legislative decree n. 139/2018, as well as the content of the several measures adopted by the Transport Authority for the railway market, considered in the light of European policy of market liberalization, establishing a single European railway area and promoting a safe, efficient, multimodal and sustainable trans-European transport network.