The Authority commissioned an impact analysis of its advocacy interventions in the local public services sector, focusing particularly on municipal waste management and local public transport.

The Italian Competition Authority commissioned the consulting firm Lear to develop an ex ante impact assessment methodology designed to estimate the potential benefits of its advocacy interventions in the local public services sector. The methodology focuses particularly on municipal waste management and local public transport (“LPT”). The Authority’s advocacy reports in these sectors mainly involve cases where the granting authority chose not to use a competitive tendering procedure to select the concessionaire, failing to provide adequate justification for this decision.

The analysis shows a clearly positive potential ex ante impact on the quality of municipal waste management services, when considering the Authority’s advocacy reports issued between 2023 and 2025. These interventions could result in an average increase of around 16% in the overall separate waste collection rate, with an estimated saving on the average aggregate cost of collecting and transporting separately collected waste of 20%, equivalent to approximately € 120 million. Lear’s analysis estimated the potential benefits of these interventions from an ex ante perspective, measuring them in terms of lower costs for society and improvements in service quality. The methodology is based on a comparison between a group of granting authorities that received an advocacy report or warning letter from the Authority (so-called “non-virtuous” authorities) and a group that used efficient awarding methods (so-called “virtuous” authorities). The difference in outcomes between these two groups therefore provides an estimate of the potential ex ante benefit of the Authority’s intervention. The breadth, granularity, and standardisation of the data available in the waste management sector made it possible to compare the outcomes of the two groups of contract awards through detailed and robust econometric analysis.

As regards the LPT sector, two case studies were developed – again based on a comparison between non-virtuous and virtuous granting authorities – to provide useful information for a qualitative assessment of the potential ex ante impact of the Authority’s advocacy interventions. These comparisons, which covered awards with comparable socioeconomic and territorial characteristics, revealed a potential ex ante benefit consisting primarily in the virtuous authority’s greater ability to attract per capita demand (i.e., the annual number of passengers carried per inhabitant) and to manage expenditure efficiently.

Rome, 9 September 2026

Introduction and summary

Final Report