About the national database

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The Normattiva project was launched in March 2010 to promote the computerisation and classification of the State and regional provisions in force by public administrations, to facilitate free searches and consultation of these provisions by citizens and to provide instruments for legislative review, which is the responsibility of the Prime Minister’s Office, the Senate of the Republic and the Chamber of Deputies.

The documents in the “Normattiva” database can be consulted in three forms:

  • the original version published in the Italian Official Journal;
  • the version in force and applicable on the date of consultation of the database and
  • the version in force on any given prior date specified by the user.

When complete, the database will comprise the entire corpus of State law in the form of numbered acts (laws, decree laws, legislative decrees and other numbered acts).
At present it contains approximately 75 000 acts, all adopted in or since 1946.
It does not include ministerial decrees.

The project is still at the development phase. In future:

  • it will be possible to navigate the entire database via dynamic links from the amended provision to the relevant Article in the next amending act;
  • the search function will be upgraded to include searches “by concept” as well as by semantic category;
  • all the legislative acts published when Italy was a Kingdom (1861-1946) will be recovered and made available;
  • it will contain links to all the other public legislative databases, starting with those containing regional laws and Community legislation.