A recent sentence of the Emilia-Romagna TAR has established that the removable panoramic windows (Vepa) are part of thefree construction And they don’t need building permits. The case stems from a dispute between some real estate owners and a municipal administration, which had ordered the demolition of glass structures installed on a balcony, considering it illegal works.
The court instead recognized the full legitimacy of the windows, highlighting compliance with the current national legislation.
But what are the implications of this decision for those who want to install panoramic windows?
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The case: the installation of the windows and the municipal ordinances
The dispute originates from the installation of panoramic windows on some balconies of a building located in the municipality of Reggio Emilia. These windows, known as Vepa (removable panoramic windows), were made up of glass panels mounted on metal guides, designed to be easily opened and closed to package, without creating a fixed and permanent closure.
The reporting of a private individual led the municipal administration to carry out two inspections, during which the technicians detected the presence of the windows and drawn up a report in which they classified them as a “new construction” intervention, as they changed the shape of the building to their opinion and involved an increase in volume. Following these checks, the Municipality adopted two measures:
- A demolition orderwith which the removal of the windows and the restoration of the original state of the balconies was imposed on the owners, considering the intervention unauthorized and incompatible with local urban planning rules.
- An order of pecuniary sanction of 2,000 eurosapplied to the owners for the alleged implementation of illegal building works, in the absence of a qualifying title in accordance with the provisions of the regional and national legislation.
According to the Municipality, the closure of the balcony with windows was a relevant transformation from a building point of view, making a preventive authorization necessary. The area in which the properties were located was also subject to particular urban planning constraints, which prohibited interventions such as to modify the appearance and intended use of open spaces.
The owners decided to challenge the measures before the regional administrative court, claiming that the intervention performed did not involve any volumetric variation and that the windows, being removable and not constituting a stable closure, fell fully among the works of free construction.
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The use of the TAR and the arguments of the owners
Faced with the demolition order and the administrative sanction, the owners filed an appeal to the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Emilia-Romagna, contesting the decision of the Municipality on various fronts.
One of the main arguments of the defense concerned the nature of the building intervention: the applicants claimed that the installed windows were fully conform to national legislationin particular in art. 6, paragraph 1, lett. b-bis) of Presidential Decree 380/2001 (Consolidated Real Text). This rule, introduced by Law 142/2022in fact he clarified that the realization of removable and transparent panoramic windows (Vepa) it is part of the free construction interventions, provided that:
- Do not generate new volumes or closed surfaces.
- Are removable and transparentguaranteeing natural micro -regulation.
- Does not alter the shape of the building.
In their appeal, the owners stressed that the windows in question they did not constitute a new closed environmentbut they limited themselves to protecting the balcony from atmospheric agents, without changing its intended use or involving a volumetric increase. Also, they recalled several pronouncements of administrative jurisprudenceincluding those of Council of Statewhich in the past had already established that the Vepa do not fall within the definition of new construction.
Another critical point raised in the appeal concerned failure to communicate the procedure by the Municipality. The owners denounced that they had never received the official notification before the issuance of the ordinances, which had prevented them from presenting observations or documentation to support the conformity of the work. This omission represented one violation of the principle of administrative participationsanctioned by Law 241/1990making the municipal measure potentially illegitimate.
Finally, the applicants highlighted a procedural error in the process followed by the Municipality: the pecuniary sanction had been inflicted Before of the demolition order, reversing the logical order of the measures. This aspect was indicated as an additional reason for illegitimacy of the contested acts.
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Tar’s decision: the windows fall into free construction
The Regional Administrative Court of Emilia-Romagna, with sentence no. 373/2024, accepted the appeal of the owners, canceling both the demolition order and the pecuniary sanction imposed by the Municipality. The sentence recognized that the removable panoramic windows installed are among the free construction interventions, in accordance with the current national legislation.
The TAR stressed that, so that a work can be considered one new constructionmust determine a significant volumetric increase and a permanent modification of the building’s shape. In the specific case, the windows installed:
- They have not created new volumes or closed surfacessince they were removable and operable in package.
- They did not alter the shape of the buildingbeing positioned inside the balcony railing.
- They did not involve a change of intended useremaining functional only to protection from atmospheric agents.
The sentence also highlighted that national legislation, with the introduction of the discipline on Vepa in 2022explicitly provided that These interventions do not require building permitsexcept in particular cases in which they generate closed volumes or permanent alterations of the building. Therefore, the Municipality should not have treated the installation of the windows as a building abuse.
A further critical aspect detected by the TAR concerns the management of the administrative procedure. The Court considered the exception raised by the applicants failure to communicate the procedureconfirming that this omission prevented the owners from defending themselves adequately. Also, he recognized how the anticipation of the pecuniary penalty compared to demolition is incorrectreversing the normal sanctioning procedure required by law.
In light of these considerations, the TAR has established that the provision of the Municipality it was illegitimate and had to be canceledrecognizing the owners the right to keep the windows installed.
