by Guerino Ferri, Lawyer at the Bar of Salerno
Legal context
In Italy, the Cartabia Reform introduces some important changes for Consulente Tecnico di Ufficio[1] (CTU), including the creation of the national register, mobility and the introduction of specialized sections. Legislative Decree No. 149-2022 concerning the reform of the civil process came into force on 18 October 2022, but the changes it contains will apply from 30 June 2023.
New rules introduced by the reform
The introduction of a National Register is established in line with Art. 24bis of the Civil Code.
The mobility of CTUs will be fostered with the possibility for judges to appoint the professional who best meets the required competences by issuing a motivated measure and communicated to the President of the Court. This change is positive both for CTUs, who will be able to obtain more appointments, and for judges to have skills that sometimes, as sometimes happens in small courts, are not available.
Supervision of designations has been introduced to ensure fair distribution among those on the register with the clarification that no CTU may exceed 10 per cent of those assigned by the specific court.
Moreover, the relevant fees will be freely available in a special register (consistent with Article 23 Supervision of the distribution of assignments- of the Implementing Provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure). The appointments entrusted and the fees paid by the judge to those registered in the register are recorded in the computer systems regulated according to the technical rules for the adoption of information and communication technologies in civil proceedings.
The CTUs can now be appointed by the judges of the specialized sections (business courts) with reference to the entire district, which is in fact a regional extension, except for the largest sections: Rome, Milan and Naples, which have intra-regional jurisdiction.
Unreformed rules
Once again, the reform did not consider a reform of the fees that are still stuck at the Ministerial Decree of 30 May 2002 published in the Official Gazette no. 182 of 5/8/2002 with the limits established by fixed and percentage tables dating back to the 1980s.
Moreover, it could have intervened to verify the actual competences at the time of the CTU’s registration (not only technical, but also procedural).
In addition, the reform did not deal with the creation of a register of Party Technical Consultants.
Finally, the reform could have regulated the modalities for activating a ‘control’ on the CTU’s work, to the benefit of the quality of the reports filed and the delivery times.
[1] Technical consultant of the judge, i.e. judicial expert.
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