You can get lost in those 1,526 pages of data, numbers and names. Since dawn today, the Strait of Messina has made public the urban planning and personal details of all those who in some way will be interested in expropriation or similar operations.
Here is the list of expropriations
And here we must immediately make the first distinction. Not all the particles contained in the 1,526 pages of the expropriation project foresee that the owners lose possession of their property. Because the first major division is between, precisely, expropriations and enslavement. There are areas on which the tower that will support the bridge will have to be built, or the railway will have to pass or a complementary work will be built and in this case the private property will be expropriated with full compensation. And then there are areas that are functional to the construction site or the work itself, but for which it is not necessary to “acquire” the property for the Stretto but an “easement” is sufficient.
Let's go in order. Scrolling through the very long list of “companies” (to find your name in the PDF it is better to activate the Search function with F3 on your PC keyboard) you come across a grid with three macrogroups: Land Registry Data, Title of Areas to be Expropriated and Other Titles.
The cadastral data, including the summary description of the intended use, are inserted immediately after the name of the owner of the area and are the sheet and the map. That property can then be included (wholly or partially) either in the titles to be expropriated or in other titles. If it is in the expropriations column (the companies involved are 1,688) the acquisition is assured and the reason is also communicated (because it is the location of the bridge, because a road or railway must pass through it, for environmental mitigation or hydraulic works) and the quantity in m2 of expropriated areas.
If instead the data is inserted in the columns of Other titles, the options are different. It mostly concerns the application of the institute ofenslavement. That is, it is a limitation that is imposed on private property. The owner of the property does not lose ownership as a consequence of the expropriation procedure but loses the possibility of “exercising” ownership in certain specific cases. For example, he may be obliged to let other owners pass through his land, he may be obliged to allow water to drain onto his land or not to alter the plants that can be planted on his land. If a sewage system has to pass under the car park of a condominium, the work will be done and then it will be used again by the condominium which, however, will not be able to do anything in that area that could endanger the sewer. Compensation is also provided for this service. In the same columns also the options for temporary employment and for the reference to art.49 of Presidential Decree 327/2001. This last option provides for a temporary occupation order with the obligation, however, to pay an occupation compensation equal to 1/12 of the value of the area for each year of occupation and to pay for any damage caused and to restore the areas in their original state. So temporary use and then return in the same previous conditions.
The compensations
It seems clear that it makes a big difference to be in an expropriation area and to be in subservience or temporary occupation. In all cases compensation is expected. For expropriations, a market valuation of the property is envisaged, using estimative techniques such as comparison (how much were similar houses sold in the same area in the recent past?), analytical (based on market price surveys such as the Observatory of the real estate market of the Revenue Agency) and the so-called capitalization of income (the capitalization of all income that the property is able to guarantee to the owner).
Finally, for all houses, beyond the market value, a useful bonus will be offered, for example, for moving. The average, regardless of whether it is a first or second home, is 20 thousand euros. For all companies there is an individual negotiation to which a counter-deduction can be made on the market value with the citizen who will have various ways to protect himself.