The Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament has approved the so-called "simplification decree" which contains the legal definitions of blockchain, or better, "technologies based on distributed registers" (DLT) and smart contracts, with the related guidelines.

The Agency for Digital Italy (AgID) will have the task of identifying the technical standards that such technologies must possess in order to be defined as such.

The purpose is to make legally recognized the memorization of an IT document on blockchain (ie on DLT) and in particular to give legal value to the electronic time validation.

Therefore, although these definitions as contained in the decree simplifications 2019 are to be considered state law, they are not yet applicable due to the lack of technical definitions.

It will therefore be the AgID to establish what concrete requirements these technologies must have in order to be able to fit into this definition now part of the Italian civil code.

The doubts expressed by some experts, however, have not been unraveled, and everything is postponed to the decisions of the AgID.

It is curious, however, that the group of experts in blockchain of the Ministry of Economic Development (MiSE) have not been asked about it: the second meeting of the group will be held tomorrow, but the text approved is now law.

Surely the experts of the MiSE will be able to help the AgID to identify the technical specifications, and it is not excluded that they can even suggest to the Parliament modifications to the approved text.

In other words, the path has just begun and several steps will be needed before reaching the full applicability of these new rules.

Conclusion: It is a first step for Italy but it shows the right direction for Italy in the future.
Even if it is a first step towards the in-depth technical definition, Italy places itself as the first country in the world in trying to start giving legal value to the transactions on the blockchain, both for cryptovaluta and smart contract transactions, placing Italy in high regard for the blockchain and fintech sector.