Penalties for food hygiene breaches in Italy — Legislative Decree 193/2007

Framework

Regulation (EC) No 852/2004 is directly applicable but contains no penalties: it leaves it to the Member States to lay down measures that are effective, proportionate and dissuasive Article 17(2) of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002. Italy discharged that duty through Legislative Decree No 193 of 6 November 2007, whose Article 6 is the reference penalty provision for breaches of the Hygiene Package Article 6 of Italian Legislative Decree No 193/2007. The decree repealed most of the earlier apparatus but not the whole of Law No 283 of 30 April 1962, which survives for the most serious, criminally relevant conduct.

The legislature's basic choice is decriminalisation: breaches of hygiene-management duties (registration, self-checking, structural requirements) are, as a rule, administrative offences punished by fines and governed by the procedure of Law No 689 of 24 November 1981. Criminal law is reserved for conduct that harms public health or the genuineness of the product.

Who is liable

The addressee of the penalties is the food business operator (FBO), that is, the natural or legal person responsible for ensuring compliance with food law within the business under its control Article 17(1) of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002. Liability follows ownership of the activity: workshops, factories, warehouses, carriers, restaurants, bars, food trucks and retail. The size of the business does not remove the obligation but affects how the fine is set within the statutory range.

What Article 6 penalises

Article 6 of Decree 193/2007 lays down several offences, each with its own statutory range (minimum–maximum). In our view it is helpful to read them grouped by type of conduct; the amounts are orders of magnitude to be verified against the text in force.

The figures above are reference amounts that circulate in enforcement practice and that Article 6 attaches to the respective offences. They must not be taken as definitive: Article 6 has been amended over time, and the actual amount depends on the exact offence and on any repetition. Before any operational use — a defence brief, a costing, a compliance decision — the amount must be checked against the version in force on Normattiva.

The self-checking whose omission is penalised is that of Article 5 of Regulation 852/2004 Article 5(1) of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004; the registration is that of Article 6 of the same regulation Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, which in Italy is carried out through the health notification for registration (SCIA); the hygiene requirements are those of Annex II to the regulation.

Formal notice and regularisation

One feature that practice emphasises — and that must be checked case by case — is the possibility, for certain remediable breaches, that the competent authority sets the FBO a deadline to regularise before, or instead of, imposing the fine (a formal notice, "diffida"). A general mechanism of formal notice for administrative offences punishable by a fine alone has been introduced into Italian law and applies where the statutory conditions are met. In our view the existence and the conditions of the notice applicable to a specific offence under Decree 193/2007 must be checked against the text in force and against the general law on administrative offences (Law 689/1981), rather than assumed: its availability is not uniform across all breaches.

Interplay with criminal penalties (Law 283/1962)

The decriminalisation carried out by Decree 193/2007 did not remove all criminal relevance. Law No 283 of 30 April 1962 retains offences for conduct that attacks health or genuineness: holding for sale or selling food in a poor state of preservation, filthy, infested, adulterated or counterfeit. These situations are not absorbed by the administrative offence in Article 6: they may run in parallel and fall to the criminal courts. In our view the dividing line is clear: management failures (no manual, no registration, a non-compliant cold room) stay on the administrative side; dangerous or fraudulent food moves onto the criminal side.

On the side of misleading commercial communication — for example selling courses or certificates dressed up as a non-existent "European certification" — unfair commercial practices are also relevant Article 6 of Directive 2005/29/EC; see why there is no certificate under Regulation 852/2004.

Who enforces

Enforcement normally takes place within official controls, which also verify the actual implementation of self-checking procedures Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625. On the ground, competence lies with the services of the Local Health Authorities (SIAN and veterinary services), coordinated at regional and national level by the Ministry of Health. The framework of competent authorities in Italy is covered in the dedicated page; the general picture of the national system is in the Italy page.