Italy now wants a navigability certificate for your foreign-flagged day boat

The rule

Article 26-ter of the Codice della Nautica da Diporto applies to recreational craft under 24 metres that fly a foreign flag and are owned by an Italian resident or an Italian legal entity. Where such a boat is operating in Italian internal waters, territorial waters or the ecological protection zone, she has to be able to demonstrate navigability. The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport set out how it expects the article to work in a circular dated 18 June 2026.

In practice the boat has to carry a valid navigability certificate issued by her flag state. Plenty of registries do not issue one, which is where the second limb comes in. If the flag state does not produce such a document, an Italian notified technical body must inspect the boat and issue an attestation, and that attestation runs for five years.

Who this actually catches

Most large yachts are outside it on length alone. The boats inside it are the ones an owner tends to think about least, which is the reason this is worth reading. The fast day boat kept at Porto Cervo, the Riva or the sportfisher on a Delaware or Cayman registration, the chase boat that runs separately from the mothership, the tender that is registered in its own right and used independently.

The trigger is the owner, not the boat. An owner who is tax resident in Italy, or who holds the boat through an Italian company, is caught even if the hull has never flown an Italian ensign. Owners who moved a boat to a foreign registry precisely to avoid Italian paperwork are the group most likely to find themselves on the wrong side of the article without knowing it.

The EU law question

Writing on SuperyachtNews on 15 July 2026, Prof. Dr Christoph Ph. Schliessmann argued that the requirement sits awkwardly with the principles behind the EU Recreational Craft Directive, which is built on mutual recognition of conformity within the single market. His formulation is that Italy can check whether a yacht in its waters presents a real environmental or safety risk, and cannot use that check to impose an Italian technical certification system on yachts lawfully registered under another EU flag.

That is an argument, not a ruling. No court has struck the article down and no infringement proceeding has been reported. An owner planning an Italian summer has to comply with the rule as written while the argument runs, because the boat is in Italy and the lawyer is not.

What to do before August

The first step is a two-minute check with whoever holds the registry papers. Does the flag state issue a navigability or seaworthiness certificate for this boat, and is it current. For most European registries the answer exists on file. For several offshore registries used for small craft it does not, and that is the case that needs an Italian inspection booked now.

The second step is to know who the owner of record is. Ownership through an Italian entity is common where a boat was bought with local finance or is kept permanently at an Italian marina under a local structure. That structure was set up for reasons that had nothing to do with this article, and it is what pulls the boat into scope. Neither the ministry circular nor the code sets out a published penalty schedule, and no reported figures are available, so the practical risk is an inspection at the quay and a boat that cannot legally move.