Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2665 actions· ✨ 90 recent

The European Commission approved a EUR 41.5 million Italian direct-grant state aid measure to Ephos Srl, an Italian photonics SME, to help finance "Fab-2," a new manufacturing facility for glass-based photonic integrated circuits used in AI datacentres, high-performance computing and quantum computing. The aid was cleared under the European Chips Act state aid framework (Commission case SA.117987, decision of 25 July 2025) and forms part of a EUR 104.9 million total project investment. Ephos already operates a first facility (Fab-1) in Milan; Fab-2 is intended to be the first EU facility of its kind processing this glass-substrate photonic chip technology at scale.

Italy's Decreto-Legge 25 giugno 2024 n. 84, converted with amendments into Legge 8 agosto 2024 n. 115 (Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 189 of 13 August 2024, in force 14 August 2024), is Italy's national implementing instrument for Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (the EU Critical Raw Materials Act). It establishes a MIMIT-led national governance framework for strategic CRM projects spanning extraction, transformation, and recycling; creates a mandatory National Register of strategic companies and value chains with annual reporting on strategic-material import/export flows; divides permitting competence between MASE (extraction/recycling, max 18/10 months) and MIMIT (transformation, max 10 months); and designates INVITALIA and CDP as financing windows for Italian strategic-CRM projects seeking EU Strategic Project status under CRMA Article 6.

Decree-Law No. 104 of 10 August 2023 ("Decreto Asset" / Omnibus Decree, GU n.186 of 10 Aug 2023, in force 11 Aug 2023) was converted with amendments into Law No. 136 of 9 October 2023 (GU n.236 of 9 Oct 2023). The conversion law materially expanded Italy's "Golden Power" foreign-direct-investment screening regime (DL 21/2012). Two key extensions: (i) intra-group transactions involving entities outside the EU are no longer exempt from the exercise of special powers — only the prior notification carve-out was preserved; (ii) acts, resolutions and operations concerning intellectual-property rights in artificial intelligence, semiconductor production, cybersecurity, aerospace, energy storage, quantum and nuclear technologies, and food production technologies fall within scope when one or more counter-parties sit outside the EU. The Prime Minister also obtained an explicit veto power over transactions creating "exceptional situations" not already covered by sectoral or EU prudential / merger rules, including those touching qualifying holdings in the financial sector.

Decreto-Legge 15 marzo 2012 n. 21 (GU n. 63 of 15 March 2012), converted with amendments into Legge 11 maggio 2012 n. 56 (GU n. 111 of 14 May 2012), establishes Italy's "Golden Power" special-powers regime — the foundational statute authorising the Italian Government to impose conditions on, veto, or prescribe remedies for corporate transactions in strategic sectors. The decree marked Italy's transition from a golden-share model (applicable only to privatised companies) to a sector-wide golden-power model applicable to any company carrying out activities of strategic relevance. Administered by the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (DICA), the regime has been progressively extended from its original defence + national-security + energy/transport/ communications scope to cover 5G, cloud, critical-raw-materials, financial-credit-insurance, agri-food, healthcare, media, space, and AI through a series of amending decrees from 2019 to 2026.