Abstract

The Law regulating business activities in areas of cultural value cyclically is cyclically under the lens of legal scholars, as they pay great attention to the shift of policy objectives in the relevant legislation and their implications on the normative set-up of related interests. Indeed, such changes in the legal framework have a decisive influence on the balancing of interests at stake the relative importance of which varies accordingly.
This article presents a reconstruction of the above-mentioned legislation since the milestone law of 1939, named “Bottai Law” after his main proponent Giuseppe Bottai, to present. By addressing the Community legislation on the matter, the study focuses on the diminishing importance given to the sensitive interests, offering a very critical review of recent regulatory interventions. Especially those which, in an effort to enhance the role of the proceeding administration in the decisional service conference, would seem to deprive of any value both the emergence of relevant interests in administrative proceedings and the role assigned to the competent administrations for their management and protection, as well as the role attributed to concertation and loyal collaboration aimed at the best care of the public interest.