Water management: legal models for developing public – private innovation and research

Water has functional and socio-economic characteristics which render it unique as a product on the market. It follows that particular attention must be dedicated to its careful and rational usage, avoiding waste and promoting re-usage of this asset. This culture of recycling is strongly promoted within the EU legal context, which applies it directly to water. It is thus necessary to innovate and find organisational solutions that are capable on the one hand of promoting access to research resources made available by the EU itself, whilst on the other hand managing the financing obtained with the involvement of public and private partners within their respective roles. Since Italian law lacks public law provisions that are capable of providing an adequate response to that requirement, it is necessary to verify whether company law might enable satisfactory aggregative innovative solutions to be developed. Our paper suggests to implement the network contract in water sector because it can provide an effective normative and operational support.