Abstract

Ten years after the Galli law the water sector cannot yet be considered an industrial one and its governance has grown more complicated due to changes in the distribution of power and competences among national and regional actors. Far too many firms are present; the regulatory activity, poorly defined, faces many practical difficulties; a proper regulator has not been created and the monitoring activity is only vaguely envisaged; the methodology chosen to regulate prices is closer to a 'cost-plus' type than to a true 'price-cap' much needed for improving the firms' productive efficiency, and it is also flawed. A revision of the regulatory activity towards a more incentive-based and less dirigistic-bureaucratic philosophy is required.