With this note, the aim is to outline a summary of the responsibilities of public bodies and individuals working within them concerning the prevention and management of landslides and hydrogeological instability.
After a brief introductory overview, the responsibilities of the various entities involved will be addressed, with particular attention to local authorities, as well as the individuals holding specific roles within them, as outlined in the relevant provisions of the Italian legal system. The main relevant sources are represented by:
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the Civil Protection Code (Legislative Decree No. 1 of January 2, 2018),
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the Consolidated Law on Local Authorities (Legislative Decree No. 267 of August 18, 2000), and
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the Environmental Code (Legislative Decree No. 152 of April 3, 2006).
For the prevention and management of landslides and hydrogeological instability, the responsibility of the public administration is distributed across multiple levels of government with competencies in land protection and management of hydrogeological risks. The subjects related to land governance and civil protection, in fact, fall under concurrent legislation between the State and regions (Article 117, Paragraph 3, Constitution). Within this framework, the following are involved:
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in addition to the State and regions,
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municipalities,
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provinces,
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metropolitan cities, and
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other entities (such as regional agencies and “park authorities,” which may be entrusted with the protection from hydrogeological instability and landslides).
In summary, the State establishes the principles to be followed, while the regions’ competencies primarily concern planning activities. Operational interventions, in terms of prevention and management, are entrusted to municipalities, which are therefore the entities most exposed to responsibility in case of landslides.
Within each entity, responsibility is attributed to the individual figures who are “directly responsible, under criminal, civil, and administrative law, for acts that violate rights” (Article 28 of the Constitution; Presidential Decree No. 3/1957). These can include:
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administrators (mainly mayors, but also councilors, regional presidents, prefects, etc.),
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managers,
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officials, and
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other public employees (such as members of the municipal civil protection operations center – COC or personnel from technical offices).
The individual responsibility of these individuals extends to the public administration they belong to, meaning that the individual responsible and the related entity are jointly liable toward the damaged parties.
Regarding the types of responsibility, generally speaking, the following points are highlighted:
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with regard to civil responsibility, public entities are liable under Article 2051 of the Civil Code (damage caused by things in their custody) or based on Article 2043 of the Civil Code (general clause on extracontractual liability). Both omissions, such as:
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failure to maintain their assets (represented by roads, rivers, lakes, aqueducts, soil defense works, etc.),
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lack of supervision (e.g., of sites at risk of landslides or hydrogeological instability),
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failure to adopt prevention or emergency measures (e.g., timely monitoring of areas affected by a disaster) or anything else prescribed by law;
as well as commission acts (such as performing an activity inconsistent with the level of risk presented by a given situation and thereby worsening it) are considered.
More than one entity may be found jointly responsible (see, for example, Cass. 22702/2025, where a municipality, province, and region were found jointly responsible for damage caused by a landslide);
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with regard to criminal responsibility, the involved persons may, depending on the case, be held responsible for various crimes, such as:
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involuntary disaster (Article 449 of the Penal Code),
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involuntary manslaughter (Article 589 of the Penal Code),
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the crime of flooding, landslides, and avalanches (Article 426 of the Penal Code),
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environmental crimes introduced by Law No. 68/2015, and other crimes.
More than one person may be involved in the commission of the same crime.
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For completeness, it should be noted that in the cases at hand, the individuals within the public administration identified as responsible are also required to answer for the damage caused to their respective entity, due to their omissions or commission acts performed with intent or gross negligence (administrative-accountability liability).
For the identification of the entity and the individual responsible both civilly and criminally, account must be taken of the competences and responsibilities assigned by the relevant regulations.
