I contratti di rete

The network contract, introduced into the Italian judicial system with the legislative decree February 10, 2009, n. 5 is a contract by which «more entrepreneurs pursue the aim of increasing, individually and collectively, their capacity for innovation and their competitiveness on the market and to this end they commit themselves, on the basis of a joint program of network, to collaborate in predetermined shapes and fields related to the exercise of their business, or to exchange information or services of an industrial, commercial, technical or technological nature or to exercise together one or more activities which belong to the scope of their business». It is a new legal judicial instrument designed by the legislature to renew the national economy and, in particular, the growth and the competitiveness of small and medium enterprises. The institute was founded as a response to the recent international crisis which has forced the companies to react and give a new impulse to the production system. To adapt themselves to this new requirement and operate in the national and international market, Italian companies have found in the contract a new form of aggregation through which they can achieve an entrepreneurial growth in terms of innovation and competitiveness, without having to resort to the establishment of a new legal entity. The first form of collaboration between companies was, in fact, that of the "industrial district" as socio-economic entity made up of a set of companies generally belonging to the same productive sector and located in determined and circumscribed area. Subsequently, the internationalization of companies and the globalization of markets has led to the failure of industrial districts and, at the same time, the emergence of business networks as a economic and legal phenomenon more complex. Business networks are characterized, in fact, by forms of association between two or more companies, independent from each other, which act in a coordinated way to make the small and medium enterprises more competitive in foreign markets. This form of aggregation, even promoted at European level with the "Small Business Act" of the European Commission, found a legal recognition in the new figure of the network contract, whose legal nature is still at the centre of a debate in doctrine.