Agcom Access to Documents: Italian Court Orders the Regulator to Open Its Council Minutes

by Fulvio Sarzana di S. Ippolito, Attorney, Sarzana & Partners Law Firm

A platform fined for secondary ticketing asks to see the internal note and the minutes through which the Italian communications regulator extended the time limits of the proceeding. The regulator, Agcom, points to its own rules. For the judges, the right of defense comes first.

In short. On Agcom access to documents, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR Lazio) has held that the right of defense prevails over the regulator's own rules: a company that is fine can see the internal notes and Council minutes that concern its case. The order was published on 21 September 2026.

There is a rule that Agcom keeps defending in court and that judges keep setting aside: the one that lets the authority keep to itself the internal notes of its offices and the minutes of its Council meetings.

The latest example is an order of the TAR Lazio published on 21 September.

The judges ordered Agcom to hand over to Ticketoo, within 30 days, a note from its offices and the minutes of three Council meetings, in the parts that concern the company. The main case, the challenge to the end, is still to be decided.

The 90,000 euro fine

Ticketoo is a Rome-based platform where private individuals resell concert tickets. In February Agcom fined it 90,000 euros under the law that reserves ticket sales to the official circuits and the resellers they authorise.

The arithmetic is simple: 5,000 euros, the minimum, for each of the 18 concerts in the charge. One detail is in the decision itself: the tickets were resold at face value or below. The report that started the case came from TicketOne.

Whether the ban also applies to someone who makes no profit on the ticket is a question for the TAR when it rules on the merits. For now the judges dealt with something else, and the issue matters to anyone dealing with an independent authority. On secondary ticketing, see also another case in which the TAR Lazio suspended an Agcom fine of 4 million euro (in Italian).

Why these documents

Put the dates in order. The charge arrives in May 2025. In September the proceeding stops for further inquiries. In November the Council of the authority grants 60 more days, in January another 30. The end arrives at the end of February.

The internal note that Agcom did not want to hand over is the one in which its offices ask the Council for the first extension. The November and January minutes are the meetings in which the extensions are granted. The February one is the meeting that decides the end.

The defense wants to understand, in essence, why the proceeding lasted as long as it did. When an authority takes more time, the refined person has every interest in reading the reasons.

Agcom access to documents: the authority's two defenses

On the note, the authority relied on its own regulation, which excludes from access the notes, drafts and proposals of its offices. For Agcom it was an internal working document with no effect on the proceeding.

On the minutes it argued two things. First, Ticketoo had never expressly asked for them. Second, even if it had, it could only have seen the conclusions of the commissioner in charge of the file, not the rest of the discussion.

What the court answered

The starting point is almost ironic. Agcom's own regulation contains a sentence copied from the Italian law on administrative procedures (Law 241/1990): access must be granted anyway when the documents are needed for defence. The authority wrote in black and white the principle that is now used against it.

On the note, the TAR follows the Council of State: an internal document is still a document, and it can be withheld only if it contains truly confidential information or is still a draft. A formal request for an extension sent to the Council is not a draft.

On the minutes, the judges refer, among other things, to the 2023 Rai case: a person who receives a sanction has the right to know how the administration got there, including the Council's discussions. They also note, almost in passing, that Agcom did not even claim that the minutes contained confidential information or the personal opinions of commissioners, the only grounds on which the regulation would allow access to be refused.

As for the fact that the minutes were not named in the request, the answer is common sense. Ticketoo had asked for «all the acts and documents» in the file, and the minutes are part of it. A company is not expected to know which papers each office of the authority keeps.

What remains

Anyone in this line of work knows that the file handed over by authorities is often a cleaned-up file. The notes of the offices are missing, the minutes are missing, and these are exactly the documents that show how a decision was made. The order on Agcom access to documents is a reminder to ask for everything, internal documents included, and to ask again after the sanction.

It remains to be understood why Agcom keeps defending a rule that the Council of State has already narrowed several times. The impression is that Council meetings are treated as a closed room. For years, the judges have answered that they are not.

In 30 days Ticketoo will read how the November and January extensions were justified.

If the reasons turn out to be weak, the 90,000 euro fine could fall on a question of timing, before the merits of secondary ticketing are even reached.

Frequently asked questions on Agcom access to documents

A first version of this article was published on 22 September 2026 on Fulvio Sarzana's blog at Il Sole 24 Ore (in Italian).