Italy drinking age

From Wikipedia: Selling alcohol to those under the age of 18 in shops carries a fine between €250 and €1000. Serving alcoholic beverages to those under the age of 16 is a criminal offense and is punished with prison up to one year.

I would also like to read others' imput about this as we are traveling with our 15 yr old son this summer.

Ok. I've spent the last 5 hours reading the text of the applicable laws on alcohol sale and administration of 2001 and related penal code articles, the 2012 Law, the 2013 Ministry Resolution and Clarification, as well as the recourse and decisions before the Supreme Court of Cassation of Nov. 2013, June 2014 and November 2014. I have also read scholarly legal articles. Over 30 pages of legal interpretations and disposition by the various Italian Associations representing restaurants, bars and grocery stores (FIPE, CONFESERCENTI, CONGCOMMERCIO), plus numerous articles on the matter published in newspapers since 2012 on this subject, including action by police authorities in recent years.

After reading all of that, I found confirmation that Italy is not a normal country, but a country that is ruled by laws complicating simple affairs. The simpler the matter, the more complex the legislation. That is the reason why in Italy nobody follows the laws. Because it is simply impossible.

The Italian law and Italian jurisprudence distinguishes the act of selling alcohol to a minor for the purpose of taking it away closed in a container (for example buying a bottle of wine in a store) from the act of administering alcohol for drinking on the spot (the barista opening the bottle of beer for you at the bar or restaurant for you to drink there). I found rivers of ink explaining, with Latin legal citations, how the two cannot be mixed and the law provide a plethora of situations and ages and times of sale which will result in various sanctions, some of which administrative while others criminal violations of the penal code.

To make a long story short, both sale and administration of alcohol is prohibited under the age of 18, but with varying degrees of consequences depending on your being over 16 or under, buying a closed bottle or drinking there, or taking it and drinking it from a self service refrigerator before you pay the barista or after.

Regarding serving the alcohol at a restaurant table where adults are present, that gets more confusing. If the server serves a bottle of wine for the adults at the table, and the adults (e.g. Parents) then share with the minor. That is not the restaurant problem and no violation occurs as the relationship of the serving act was with the adult. But if the server pours the wine go the minor, or if the server opens a single small bottle of beer specifically to the minor then the violation occurs. This is because in this case the intent to administer the alcohol specifically to the minor is established. If the minor is under 18 but over 16, then it's not a criminal violation, but an administrative violation, which however, being the result of a Ministerial clarification, not a law, is as we speak pending with the Supreme Court of cassation.

I know by now you are in need of a full bottle of Chianti. Just make sure it is served to the adult which then shares with the minor not the other way around.

Roberto,

"After reading all of that, I found confirmation that Italy is not a normal country, but a country that is ruled by laws complicating simple affairs. The simpler the matter, the more complex the legislation."

What a profound statement! I knew that Italian laws were complex, and your statement seems to make perfect sense of the situation.

Any thoughts on this article.....

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/neil-macdonald-why-europe-is-broken-1.1161692

The part about building the train station was astounding!

Ken, I've just finished to read the piece of... journalism? you linked. This quote:

Article 18 of its labour law, which basically makes it impossible to fire anyone for any reason

maybe it's the most blatantly false phrase I've ever read, and I've been a data analyst responsible for monitoring facts and sources for half of my working life.

Before Mr. Renzi changed it, Article 18 was used to protect less than 3,000 workers each year. The other 6.3 millions could and were often fired without big problems.
More, it was applicable to 2.4% of Italian companies.
Rubbish, and the rest of the article isn't better.

Mr. Macdonald is a conservative journalist, that calls the Associations of doctors and lawyers and the truck drivers unions "guilds" (I wonder how Canadian bar association would react to such a nickname), no problem.
Oil and weapons lobbies are normal, while cabs "guilds" are wrong for the free market and the public. Again, no problem... but checking facts is a matter of respect when you're writing about people who have lost their jobs.

I will not even start talking about the fact that the second manufacturing economy in Europe was summed up talking about luxury goods (3% of Italian GDP).

Are all legendary anglo-saxons editors dead? I mean those I was thought to worship when I was a student.

I have absolutely no knowledge of the law, but never would have guessed any of the above from personal experience. We were traveling in Italy with a large group, including many teens, last summer. They were served wine with dinner any time they indicated this was their preference, pretty much everywhere we went. Very few of them could have passed for 18 or older. Wow.

That article is from 2012 and has not aged well. Now that Monti is no more in power since two years, everybody can see how ineffective his government was.

Ruth:

The law is fairly new (2012, with Ministerial clarification issued in 2013), and since its interpretation is confusing, it is not consistently applied and only recently it was enforced.
Historically when I was growing up in Italy (up until the 2001 law) there was an administrative sanction only for the 'somministrazione' (serving alcohol for immediate drinking, for example at a bar) to minors under the age of 16. There were NO restrictions whatsoever to the sale of alcohol up until 2012. So for example when I was growing up I was regularly buying wine for my parents whenever they sent me grocery shopping. I might have been 14 even. Also in Italy you had vending machines that sold wine and beer exactly like coke machines in America, therefore there was no restriction.

Even the serving of alcohol at a bar was not enforced. The limit was 16 years old, but I was never denied a glass of beer even when I was 14 or 15. I distinctly remember going to discos where one drink was included with the price of admission. The limit was 16 but nobody asked for ID, and all of us drank that free drink long before we reached 16.

But alcohol abuse was not a problem then, and the barista generally would stop serving someone only if 'manifestly drunk', as the law required.

Things have changed recently. The North European and North American practice of binge drinking and hard liquor drinking became part of the Italian youth culture in the 1990's, so, after numerous cases of drug poisonings in discos, in 2001 they made it a criminal offense to administer alcohol to under 16 (it was just a misdemeanor before).

When the law prohibiting the sale in 2012, they left the 'administration of the drink' unchanged at 16. Therefore it was ok (and many still think it's ok) to serve alcohol between 16 and 18, but not to sell. Hence the Ministerial clarification of 2013 which said that you also need to be 18 (not 16) to be served alcohol, but in that case it would be only an administrative fine.

The law is still not applied consistently and many establishments still serve alcohol to under 18 (but over 16).

However your example is different, because you have a group where there are minors but accompanied by their parents. Here the law is very blurred because if there is a parent consenting to serving their minor children then the violation by the server may not be present, and there is no law in Italy that prohibits a parent from giving alcohol to their 15 year old son even in a public space. There have been instances however of friends over 18 that have ordered drinks and then given them to their minor friends. There is no court decision on those instances yet, but some local jurisdictions have taken the position that unless the adult is a parent or guardian, it would be illegal to do so and the adult friend would be sanctioned. However I could not find cases where that has really happened (it was just a public statement by local police authorities) but the law is totally silent on this matter and there are no court precedents that I could find.

Law is a complex matter. In Italy it is even more maddening.

dario,

Thanks for the feedback on the article I linked. When reading articles of that type, I always hope the journalist has done his "homework" and has the facts straight. It's difficult to get the other side of the story, especially not living in Italy and not being completely fluent in the language.

Roberto, 5 hours of research, impressive, the OP really got her/his money's worth on this question.
(I didn't know we were worth 5 hours.)
Thanks for sharing what you learned.
(As you suggested, I just finished the bottle of chianti. And there are no minors here, so I guess I'm safe. Well, my 2 year old grandson didn't seem interested in the chianti (not that I offered him any, grandmother was watching like a hawk).

Roberto, in the "average" Italy household (if you can generalize from your experience) what is the situation regarding drinking wine with meals in the house, with respect to those under 16?

Keep in mind that it's either the bill or just "il conto" - "the il conto" translates as " the the bill", which is quite amusing.

Not to be confused with "il mio conto" which literally translates as "the my bill" but is how the Italians say "my bill".

Kent, my experience is different from Quirite. Maybe in Tuscany, the land of the Chianti, we had different habits.
I was first introduced to wine by my grandfather at lunch. He had a small vineyard in the prov of Arezzo and made his own, like other members of my family. I don't remember my age, but he died when I was 5, so it had to be before then. My parents would let me taste it with water occasionally, but my grandpa didn't because he believed that diluted wine was bad for the health. Another uncle, who also made wine from his vineyard, thought the same and always gave it to me straight. He was a high ranking carabinieri officer so he must have known if it was legal or not then. Those were rare circumstances though, as wine was not normally given to kids so young. At the time there was the belief ( at least in the countryside where my parents came from) that you can drink wine regularly but in moderation only at puberty. So my regular wine with dinner and my first wet dreams came simultaneously ( about 11 or 12). My father allowed me to drink half a glass during the meal, but only with the 'secondo' course after eating a full dish of 'primo'. That was another of his Tuscan beliefs that alcohol must be drunk only after your stomach is full of pasta (carbs). Apparently I later discovered that popular country folk belief has some scientific basis. I rarely drank wine outside of meals, however a beer was common on hot days even outside of meals. Beer was also more common eating pizza out, but otherwise in Tuscany it's red wine, or white in hot summer days. I see that my friends with thei children in Tuscany follow the same rules as our parents. However I know that hard liquor and cocktails are more common with youngsters nowadays than when I was growing up. Beer consumption also surpassed wine with new generations.

I remember in 2001 kids no older than 16 were drinking beer in McDonalds in Venice with their hamburger.

I am in Rome at the moment and a few restraurants have signs in the window saying - Due to new Italian law no person under 18 will be served alcohol.