Qualificazione delle stazioni appaltanti — qualification of contracting authorities (Italy)

The rule

Article 62(1) sets the free zone. Every contracting authority may buy supplies and services autonomously up to the amounts set for direct awards, and award works up to €500,000; it may also place orders on instruments made available by qualified central purchasing bodies and soggetti aggregatori. The spending-containment obligations — Consip conventions, MEPA — continue to apply on top.

Article 62(2) sets the wall. To run tenders above those amounts an authority must be qualified under article 63 and Allegato II.4, and for those tenders "l'ANAC non rilascia il codice identificativo di gara (CIG) alle stazioni appaltanti non qualificate".

Article 63(1) establishes the list at ANAC, which keeps and publishes it, with central purchasing bodies and soggetti aggregatori in a dedicated section. Article 63(2), as amended by the 2024 corrective decree to cover execution as well as design and award, sets three bands:

• basic / first level — services and supplies up to €750,000, works up to €1 million;
• intermediate / second level — services and supplies up to €5 million, works up to the EU threshold of article 14;
• advanced / third level — no limit.

An authority may run procedures at its own level and below (art. 63(3)). Article 63(6) allows partial qualification: for design and award of works only, or of services and supplies only, or, on the conditions in Allegato II.4, for execution only.

Some bodies are enrolled by right under article 63(4): the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport including the Provveditorati, Consip, Invitalia, Difesa Servizi, the Agenzia del demanio, the soggetti aggregatori, Sport e salute, and the Soprintendenze covering regional capitals. At first application, unions of municipalities, provinces, metropolitan cities, provincial-capital municipalities and regions were enrolled with reserve.

What is measured, and what happens if you cheat

Article 63(5) says qualification covers the capacity to design procedures, to award and control the whole procedure, and to verify execution including testing and commissioning. Article 63(7) lists the requirement families: organisation of the spending function and its processes; the number, experience and competence of the human resources, including recruitment and staff training; and experience in designing, awarding and executing contracts.

Article 63(11) bars proving the requirements by artifices that defeat their purpose, and lets ANAC fine an authority between €500 and €1 million for grave violations, suspending the qualification in the worst cases. Named examples: a central purchasing body claiming a stable organisation whose staff in fact still work for their home administration; staff declared as dedicated who are in fact doing other work; and failure to tell ANAC that a requirement has been lost. Article 63(12) protects the market: if qualification lapses or is suspended, procedures already under way are completed anyway.

Article 62(10) closes the loop for buyers left outside. A non-qualified authority consults ANAC's published list and asks a qualified authority or central purchasing body to run the procedure; silence for ten days counts as acceptance; on refusal, ANAC assigns the request within fifteen days to a qualified body chosen by band.

Where the system has got to

ANAC adopted its qualification regulation with delibera n. 334 of 30 July 2025, published in Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 193 of 21 August 2025, covering ordinary qualification for design and award and for execution, assignment d'ufficio under article 62(10), and qualification with reserve under article 63(13). The scoring criteria were reset after the corrective decree by delibera n. 236 of 3 June 2025. Applications may be filed at any time; each new application restarts an independent two-year validity from the date it is sent, and irreversibly replaces the previous one.

From 1 January 2025, under article 88 of D.Lgs. 209/2024, authorities already qualified for the design and award of works and/or of services and supplies are qualified for execution of the same at the corresponding levels — so the execution list did not have to be rebuilt from scratch.

From 1 July 2026 ANAC has been running a monitoring system of qualified authorities' decisional efficiency, with reorganisation plans, under article 11(4-bis) and following of Allegato II.4; ANAC calculated the first round from BDNCP data as at 30 June 2026.

What it means for a bidder

Concentration. Anything meaningful in works, and services and supplies above the bands, is run by a limited set of qualified authorities and central purchasing bodies rather than by every municipality. Track the qualified list, the soggetti aggregatori and the regional central purchasing bodies, and you have covered most of the addressable market with far fewer sources to watch.

Ask who will actually run it. When a small buyer tells you a tender is coming, the procedure may be run by a different, qualified authority — and that is where the notice will appear, where the platform registration lives, and whose rules on lists and market surveys will apply to you.

Expect a certified platform at the other end. Availability of a certified digital procurement platform is itself a qualification requirement under Allegato II.4, which is why the buyers you deal with are on certified systems and why a paper submission is no longer an option.

Related terms

• ANAC — Autorità Nazionale Anticorruzione (Italy)
• MEPA and Consip — Italy's electronic marketplace and national central purchasing body
• CIG — Codice Identificativo Gara (Italy)
• Codice dei contratti pubblici (D.Lgs. 36/2023) — Italy's public contracts code

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