On 11 October 2017, the Italian Senate approved the final version of a law aimed at systemically reforming Italian insolvency law, which fundamentally dates from 1942. Law no. 155/2017 (the Law) was published in the Official Gazette on 30 October 2017 and entered into force on 14 November 2017. The reform was based on the preparatory work of the “Rordorf Commission”, a group of experts appointed by the Ministry of Justice in January 2015. Both the Commission and the Government were inspired by the desire to comply with the international best practices set out by UNCITRAL, the World Bank and the EU, though curiously no mention is made of the 2016 Proposal for an EU Directive on Insolvency, Restructuring and Second Chance. The 2017 Law does not materially change the current legislation. It gives the government the authority (and a period of twelve months) to amend the law by means of one or more decrees. Their enactment will determine a change in the applicable law. In the current state of political uncertainty due to the increasingly probable general elections, it is not possible to speculate whether these decrees will be enacted in the near future.
