AGCM

In order to avoid the serious distortions noted in funeral services, there must be a clear separation between public health activities and private industry. This is the request of the Italian Competition Authority in a submission forwarded to Parliament, to the Government, to the Regions and to the National Association of Italian Municipalities.
In the report, approved at a meeting on 17 May 2007, the Authority points out that many hospital managements, in order to contain costs or even to ensure an income, allow their mortuaries to be managed by funeral directors either free of charge or for a fee. These are practices that violate the necessary distinction between public services undertaken in compliance with mortuary police requirements and commercial activities like funeral services.
Such arrangements cause grave market distortions in that the funeral director has the possibility of immediate contact with the families of the dead and thus gains an advantage over his competitors; at the same time, this can lead to an economic imposition on the relatives of the deceased who are unlikely to be in the right psychological condition to choose the funeral operator offering the best service at the lowest price.
Similar competitive distortions are created, in the Antitrust Authority's view, when funerals are carried out by the municipal companies that manage cemeteries. In this case, too, there is a commingling of typically public activities (cemetery management) and private enterprise. Further problems arise when the municipal companies, through which councils exercise an exclusive over burials, then extend their activities to related undertaking activities.
In order to resolve the distortions identified, the Authority deems suitable the solutions contained in Articles 2 and 4 of Parliamentary Bill 504/2006 entitled “Regulation of Funerary Activities”; those articles declare the role of undertaker to be incompatible with the management of institutional services in cemeteries and mortuaries.
In conclusion, the Authority recommends on the one hand that the Ministry of Health, the relevant Regional administrations and the individual Health Authorities take measures to ensure that public health services are not entrusted to private funeral operators, and on the other that local councils limit themselves to managing the cemeteries and providing other services of a public nature, without becoming involved, by way of their municipal services companies, in the privatised business of undertaking.