Banned dog breeds in Italy: the list was abolished

Most pages on this subject are answering a question Italy stopped asking. Between 2003 and 2009 the health ministry did publish a blacklist of breeds with a presumed predisposizione all'aggressività. It was scrapped in 2009, and the ordinance that governs today replaced it with nothing.

This is checkable rather than asserted. Search the full current text for pit bull, Rottweiler, Staffordshire, Tosa or Dogo Argentino and you get no matches at all — not a shorter list, not a softer one. The category does not exist in Italian law.

So if you have been hunting for Italy's banned-breed list and finding nothing, that is not a bad search. There is nothing to find.

Source: Ministero della Salute, Ordinanza 6 agosto 2013 (G.U. n. 209, 6 September 2013)

The 2013 ordinance moves the question from what is this dog to what has this dog done.

After a bite or an attack, the veterinary services open an assessment of the animal's physical and behavioural condition and of how the owner is managing it. Where they find elevated risk they set preventive measures and can require a behavioural evaluation by a vet specialising in animal behaviour.

Dogs assessed that way go onto a register the veterinary services maintain. Membership of that register — not breed — is what triggers every additional duty below.

Source: Ordinanza 6 agosto 2013, Art. 3

This is the part that matters on an insurance site, and it is a legal duty rather than a suggestion.

Article 3 is explicit: owners of dogs on the register "stipulano una polizza di assicurazione di responsabilità civile per danni contro terzi causati dal proprio cane" — they take out third-party civil liability cover for damage their dog causes — and must always apply both a lead and a muzzle when the dog is in urban areas and places open to the public.

Note what that is not. It is liability cover for the animal: not veterinary cover, and nothing to do with your own health insurance. It is a separate product bought separately, and it sits alongside whatever you arrange for yourself.

Article 4 adds a bar on who may keep a registered dog at all — among others, habitual offenders and anyone convicted of a non-negligent crime against the person.

Comuni can layer their own rules on top, so the muzzle and lead position in your specific town is a question for the comune rather than for national law.

Source: Ordinanza 6 agosto 2013, Art. 3 comma 4 and Art. 4

To be clear about scope: we do not arrange pet transport, import permits or animal liability cover. We are an insurance introducer for international health and life cover for people.

What we can do is the human side of the same move — health cover that meets the rule your route sets out, cited and dated on the country hub. Pre-existing conditions are excluded and cover is governed by the Regency Assurance policy wording.