The Veneto Regional Administrative Court declared the question of constitutional legitimacy of article 57 of the Third Sector Code, which allows the direct assignment of emergency and urgent medical transport only to voluntary organizations, to be unfounded.

The TAR reasons as follows: “Given that the l. no. 106 of 2016, in delegating to the Government the identification of the criteria and methods for the assignment of services of general interest to entities, allowed the delegated legislator to select which entities, within the third sector, could be recipients of a direct assignment, without any excess of delegation in the government's choice to reserve the selection pursuant to art. 57 of Legislative Decree 117/2017 to voluntary organizations only, the different treatment of social cooperatives compared to voluntary organizations is reasonably based on the basis of the functional and organizational diversity between the two types of entities. … As noted in the jurisprudence, in fact, voluntary organizations aim at the human promotion and social integration of citizens, on a non-profit basis, while social cooperatives are based on cooperation and, therefore, on a common form of work aimed at cause an economic advantage to those who are part of the cooperative itself, so that only the voluntary organization does not pursue, even indirectly, an economic advantage for its members (C. Stato, section III, 22.11.2016, n. 4902; C. Stato, section III, 10.8.2016, n. 3615; TAR Ancona, section I, 15.4.2016, n. 244). The reservation of the direct assignment of the emergency medical transport service only to voluntary organizations, therefore, cannot be said to be either unreasonable or detrimental to the legal position of the social cooperative and its workers. In fact, social cooperatives are entities which, although non-profit, are based on cooperation and, therefore, on a common form of work, aimed at causing an economic advantage to those who are part of the cooperative (C. Stato, sez. III, ord., 11/09/2020, n. 5313), and by their nature they pursue an entrepreneurial purpose albeit characterized by a mutual purpose, thereby differentiating themselves from voluntary organisations".

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