Italian Court of Cassation limits building tolerance applications

The Italian Court of Cassation has issued a ruling (No. 18459/2025) clarifying the legal limits of building tolerances. The court established that construction tolerances cannot be used to regularize works carried out in the total absence of valid building permits or authorization titles.

Under Article 34-bis of the Consolidated Law on Building (Testo Unico dell’Edilizia), introduced by the Salva Casa Decree, tolerances are intended to address minor physiological discrepancies in projects that were already legally authorized. The ruling emphasizes that these tolerances do not function as a 'masked amnesty' for illegal structures. Without a prior legal title, there is no regulatory benchmark to measure deviations, meaning works born from a total lack of permits cannot be sanctioned through this mechanism.