No space authorisation until 31 December: the 100-million insurance requirement stays
7 min read
As of today, 8 August 2026, Decree-Law No. 144 of 7 August 2026 is in force — “Urgent provisions for the functioning of public administration and local authorities, and on civil protection” (Official Gazette, General Series No. 182 of 7 August 2026; our translation here and below). Five chapters — public administration, the Campi Flegrei, seismic prevention, local tax collection, final provisions — and, at Article 11, a provision on space under a heading that does not name it: “Measures concerning installations of national strategic interest”. The single paragraph amends Article 29 of Law No. 89 of 13 June 2025, Italy’s space law. The gap is worth a line, because anyone searching from the word “installations” will not find the rule.
What is suspended
The new paragraph 2-bis of Article 29 suspends, under certain conditions, the authorisation regime of Article 4(1) of Law 89/2025: “The space activities referred to in Article 3 are subject to authorisation.” The suspension applies to activities “carried out, in performance of contracts entered into after the date of entry into force of this law, before the date of entry into force of the decrees referred to in Article 13 and in any case no later than 31 December 2026.” Two cumulative conditions: the contract entered into after Law 89/2025 came into force, and the activity carried out before the Article 13 decrees — in any case no later than 31 December 2026. Article 4(3), which makes authorisation conditional on “reimbursement of the costs of the review procedure and payment of a fee”, is likewise without practical effect for the same period: if no authorisation is needed, neither is the fee that accompanies it.
What stays in force
The provision has to be read paragraph by paragraph: it suspends one obligation and leaves four others standing. The same paragraph 2-bis preserves, “even in the absence of authorisation”, “the provisions of Article 21, paragraphs 1 and 3 to 7 and, consequently, … Articles 18, 19 and 20”.
Article 21(1) provides that “authorised operators shall take out insurance contracts or other suitable financial guarantee covering damage arising from the space activity with a cap of 100 million euro per event”. The cross-reference is specific: paragraphs 1 and 3 to 7, not paragraph 2 — the paragraph that allows, through the Article 13 decrees, lower risk-based caps, “in any case no lower than 50 million euro or, in the case of an authorised operator pursuing exclusively research purposes or qualified as an innovative start-up, 20 million euro per event”. Those bands depend on decrees that do not yet exist: within the window the reference remains the full cap, 100 million.
Articles 18, 19 and 20 accordingly stand. Article 18 makes whoever operates “always liable to compensate damage caused to third parties on the earth’s surface as well as to aircraft in flight and to persons and property on board them”, save where it proves exclusive wilful misconduct by an unconnected third party that could not have been prevented, or exclusive fault of the injured party (contributory negligence, Article 1227 of the Civil Code). Article 19 gives the Italian State, when called to answer by a foreign State under the 1972 Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (Law No. 426/1976), twenty-four months to bring a recovery action against the operator that caused the damage. Article 20 gives anyone injured in Italy by space activities for which a foreign State is liable six months to file a claim, from the damage or from when its effects emerged.
One detail deserves a question, not an answer. Article 18(3) states that “in the cases provided for by paragraph 2, the authorised operator is liable for the damage up to the limit set out in Article 21, paragraphs 1 and 2”. The provision refers to an authorised operator — and in the window open from today, whoever acts without the authorisation is not one. Whether that reference applies here is a question for your own lawyer before signing, not one to settle by reading an article.
How we check it
Checking whether an activity falls within the window is not a one-off reading: it is a control we repeat every time a contract changes or a decree is issued. On the client’s own documents, we build a register that cross-references each space contract’s signing date against the entry into force of Law 89/2025, verifies that the insurance or financial guarantee is in place at the correct cap, and logs the assessment with date and owner — ready to produce if the exemption is challenged months later. The same control flags the approach of 31 December and the publication of the Article 13 decrees.
See the service · Talk to an engineer
The Article 13 decrees, and a calculation of our own
The decrees meant to close the window are issued by the President of the Council of Ministers with the ministers for defence, foreign affairs, justice, the economy, infrastructure, enterprise and civil protection, “having obtained the opinion of the Council of State”, after consulting COMINT, the Italian Space Agency, the National Cybersecurity Agency and, where appointed, the Delegated Authority under Law No. 124/2007. They define, among other things, “the conditions and requirements to ensure a high level of security” — the technical perimeter missing today.
The new paragraph 2-ter adds a figure worth a calculation, not a forecast: those decrees enter into force “ninety days after their publication”. To take effect by 31 December 2026, publication would need to fall within the first days of October — our own calculation, worked backwards from the text, not a forecast. If publication slips, the window still closes on 31 December under the “in any case no later than” clause of paragraph 2-bis, and from 1 January 2027 the Article 4 authorisation requirement applies again — even without the decrees that should define conditions, requirements, fees and risk bands.
A methodological note: a decree-law must be converted into law within sixty days, and may be amended during conversion. What is written here holds for the text published on 8 August; the converted text will need rereading once it arrives.
What to do now
- Check the contract’s signing date: the exemption applies only to activities carried out under contracts entered into after Law 89/2025 came into force.
- Check that the insurance policy or financial guarantee is in place and sufficient: the obligation is not suspended, and the reference remains the full 100-million cap.
- Put today’s assessment in writing — which activities are exempt, why, with date and decision-maker: the record needed if the qualification is challenged later.
- Calendar 31 December 2026 and monitor publication of the Article 13 decrees: the ninety-day vacatio period runs from that date.
- Review contract clauses that generically refer to “the authorisations provided for by law”: in this window that authorisation does not exist.
Anyone who reads only the headline — no authorisation until year end — and signs without the cover the law still requires has understood the convenient half, not the half that costs. It is the pattern we see whenever a rule moves a procedure without touching the obligation beneath it: we saw it with the AI Act sandbox, pushed back a year while the underlying obligations remained. Here the deferral concerns the authorisation, not the insurance, the liability towards third parties, or the State’s right of recovery.
The check that matters — does this activity fall within the window? is the contract dated correctly? is the guarantee sufficient? — is not an opinion that ends with an email: it is a control we run across the client’s contracts, with a dated record of what was deemed exempt. The same system holds contracts, policies, deadlines, authorisations and documents together in a single operating model on which AI agents execute decisions with an operator in command — for large enterprises, defence, public administration and healthcare: when a regulatory window opens or closes, the answer to “which contracts are affected, and who must do what by when” arrives in hours, not weeks. Always in two modes: on-premise, on autonomous machines requiring no deep integration into the client’s network, or dedicated cloud with a data centre in Italy — always with shared management.
The first session, to work out whether your space contracts fall within the window, comes at no cost. Talk to us.