The conversion law of decree law 19 of 2024, which, as is known, introduced the so-called points-based license for safety in construction sites, has corrected some inaccuracies in the original text.
The points-based driving licence must be requested through self-certification together with the submission of the application in the manner that will be established by decree of the Ministry of Labour.
In case of false declarations ascertained during the post-issue check, the license is revoked and can only be reissued after one year. It is not clear whether the revocation order follows the conviction for the crime of forgery, nor what the remedies are against errors by the administration.
I subjects to whom the points-based driving licence regulation applies are “businesses” and self-employed workers which “operate in construction sites” as per article 89 paragraph 1 letter a) TUS. Compared to the decree-law, the category of subjects required to possess a license has been expanded since now only companies in possession of a SOA in a classification equal to or higher than third are exempt.
Are excluded from the discipline those who “carry out mere supplies or performances merely intellectuals”, considering, evidently, the low risk of accidents to which they are subject.
The new qualification system is based on the granting of thirty initial credits which will be subject to deduction following the commission of certain accident prevention violations specifically identified in a specific annex (available for download at the bottom of this article) .
It ranges from accident prevention violations, to serious, very serious and, obviously, fatal accidents, but also to violations relating to reporting obligations.
The only significant injuries are those that occurred to the “employee of the company”, which means that what is caused to a third party, perhaps even fatal, is not relevant for the purposes of deducting points. A questionable choice.
The rule does not seem to distinguish between accidents (or, in any case, violations) that occurred within construction sites pursuant to art. 89 paragraph 1 letter a) of the TUS and others. This means that accidents that occurred outside the activity regulated by Title IV of the TUS also constitute a prerequisite for the deduction of points.
The table provides a hierarchy of severity that is not always entirely consistent.
The scope of application of the new regulation is limited to self-employed workers. Starting from the assumption (not always shared) that the self-employed worker has no employees (otherwise it would be an individual business) and without prejudice to the obligation to request a points-based license in order to operate on construction sites, the cases of deduction of license credits are very limited. The self-employed worker is not required to draw up the POS nor is required to participate in training courses (art. 21 TUS), so the related failures cannot constitute a basis for the deduction of points.
a) Points deduction and guarantees.
Significant changes have been made to the conditions for deducting points and the methods for restoring them.
The reduction is a consequence of final judgments and injunction orders pursuant to Article 18 of Law 689/81.
As for final sentences, it has not been specified whether plea bargain sentences should also be included in this category. In light of other reforms (the so-called Cartabia reform), the answer could only be negative. Since it has not even been clarified whether only conviction sentences are relevant, it could be argued that acquittals could also constitute the title for the deduction of points. In substance, the issue will arise especially for the case of the statute of limitations of the crime that occurred after the first-degree conviction sentence.
However, neither archiving orders following administrative oblation (legislative decree 758/94) nor penal decrees of conviction will constitute a basis for the deduction of points, as they cannot be classified as “sentences”.
As already pointed out in the commentary on the text of the decree-law, the issue that will arise will be the temporal one: the final sentence will be issued years after the accident and this will allow companies to develop all the appropriate strategies to evade the measure of the reduction. The National Labor Inspectorate will however have the possibility to suspend the driving licence as a precautionary measure but only in the event of an accident resulting in the death or permanent disability of the worker.
The ordinances provided for by law 689/18, on the other hand, are issued for violations in the field of social security and work other than those in the field of safety at work for which the specific rules dictated by Legislative Decree 758/94 apply. In fact, therefore, these are the violations provided for by article 3 of Legislative Decree 12/2002 in the field of irregular work.
As regards the restoration of points the legislator, perhaps aware of the many insidious aspects of the previous legislation, has literally made a clean sweep delegating the new regulation to a future ministerial decree. It goes without saying that, in the absence of this decree, the points-based license will not be able to come into force.
Anyone who works on construction sites without a suitable license is subject to a fine equal to 10% of the value of the works (a provision that will obviously complicate the work of the inspection officers) and in any case not less than six thousand euros.
What to do, then, in the event that points are incorrectly deducted, or the sanction is incorrectly applied for those who work on construction sites without sufficient credits, or, again, for those who have not been recognized with the correct reinstatement?
The text of the law is silent. The only guarantee provided concerns the suspension measure for which the appeal is provided for in article 14 paragraph 14 of the TUS (“within 30 days, to the territorially competent Interregional Labor Inspectorate, which will rule within 30 days of notification of the appeal. If this last term elapses without result, the suspension measure loses its effectiveness.”).
In the event of multiple violations being committed during the same inspection, the points to be deducted shall be determined in an amount not exceeding double the most serious violation.
Finally, the Ministry of Labor may extend the scope of application of the points-based driving license to other “areas of activity”.
