Cyber security: The Italian Parliament finally approved the Law Decree No. 105/2019, which significantly extends the scope of application of the Italian “golden powers” regulation

On November 13^th the Italian Parliament finally approved the Law Decree No. 105/2019, which significantly extends the scope of application of the Italian “golden powers” regulation, amending Law Decree No. 21/2012.

In particular, the new Law:

• extends the notification obligation to all the contracts relating to the development of 5G Technology
• makes a direct reference to the new sectors included in the European Regulation:

(i)    “critical infrastructures, whether physical or virtual, including energy, transport, water, health, communications, media, data processing or storage, aerospace, defense, electoral or financial infrastructures, and sensitive infrastructures, as well as investments in lands and buildings essential for the use of such infrastructures”;

(ii)   “critical technologies and dual-use items (...) including artificial intelligence, robotics, semiconductors, cybersecurity, aerospace, defence, energy storage, quantum and nuclear technologies as well as nanotechnologies and biotechnologies”.

Please note that notification of the operations in these sectors is immediately mandatory, even before the enactment of the decrees which should identify the relevant assets in a more detailed way.

Sanctions for the infringement of the notification requirements have been increased.

The new Law also complies with the EU Regulation No. 452/2019 procedural requirements.

To this purpose, among the others:

• it introduces a new criteria for the governmental assessment, if the foreign investor is a State-owned or influenced corporation
• it extends the time limit for the governmental scrutiny to 45 days.