ITALY LAW AND PRACTICE Contributed by: Giorgio Berlingieri, Alberto Massimo Rossi, Alfredo Lizio, Alberto Torrazza, Simone Gaggero and Filippo Cassola, ADVANT Nctm
• Exemption from the payment of social secu - rity contributions and welfare contributions for seafarers on board ships registered in the Italian International Register. The relevant payment will be borne by the State (see Arti - cle 6(1) of Law No 30 of 1998). By Decision C(2020) 3667, the European Com - mission authorised the Italian State aid scheme, subject to some amendments to be made to the Italian national legislation, including: • the extension of the benefits of the scheme to all eligible vessels flying an EEA flag (if a shipping company wants to benefit from the Italian International Register regime, at least a large part of its fleet must fly the flag of an EU or EEA State); and • the application of the special corporate tax reduction for shipping companies to a ship - ping company’s core revenues from ship - ping activities, such as cargo and passenger transport, certain ancillary revenues that are closely connected to shipping activities (capped at a maximum of 50% of a ship’s operating revenues), revenues from towage and dredging (subject to certain conditions), and bareboat charter-out and time and/or voyage charter-in activities (subject to a num - ber of conditions). Decree Law No 144 of 23 September 2022, con - verted into Law No 175 of 17 November 2022, has extended all the measures granted to ves - sels registered in the Italian Registry to vessels registered in the Registries of other European countries and of the EEA. As a result of the nov - elties introduced by this Decree Law, resident entities (and non-resident entities with a perma - nent establishment in the Italian territory) oper - ating vessels enrolled in the registers of other countries of the EU or the EEA will be benefi -
ciaries of Italian state aid in the same way they would be if they were operating vessels regis - tered in the Italian International Register. Ships operated by ship-owners established in Italy and registered in the EU and EEA registers will be subject, in their operations and in relation to the crew, to all the limits already envisaged for ships registered in the Italian International Register, such as: • limitations on the number of cabotage voy - ages for Ro/Ro vessels; • the application of collective agreements for EU/EEA; and • crews’ minimum manning rules, etc. The legislation has included a flag requirement (therefore complying with the European Com - mission’s requests) according to which only ship-owners whose fleet tonnage is at least 25% EU/EEA are eligible as beneficiaries of the measure. The new regime has recently been implemented by inter-ministerial Decree No 299 of 21 Novem - ber 2023, inter-ministerial Decree No 300 of 21 November 2023 and inter-ministerial Decree No 302 of 22 November 2023. 8. Implications of Non- Performance, the IMO 2020, Trade Sanctions and the War in Ukraine 8.1 Force Majeure and Frustration The Italian Civil Code does not provide a real def - inition of force majeure and frustration, although it does provide for some situations where the occurrence of events that can be linked to those concepts will be presupposed. For contracts subject to Italian law, without prejudice to the
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