Earthquake Insurance in Italy: Is It Possible?

Since a long time, the State, founded on solidarity principles, intervenes and indemnifies the earthquake damage suffered by citizens, assuming the reconstruction cost. In these last years the Parliament tried repeatedly to shift, almost in part, the damage compensation to the insurance system. A lot of draft laws on the theme didn’t have success. The April 6 2009 earthquake in Abruzzo region proposed again the problem concerning the very high cost of reconstruction intervention, emphasized by the very singular Government’s choice, condensed into the slogan “from the tents to the houses”. In this article are analysed same fundamental aspects concerning damage compensation, pointing to the needs to establish a close connection among the prevention action, still very small in the country, and the possibility that the insurance system could play a relevant role in the reconstruction phase.

For this paper is available an extended abstract after the text in Italian

Roberto De Marco