Tra Stato e società: le federazioni sportive nel perimetro mobile delle amministrazioni pubbliche

This article seeks to analyze the issue of the legal nature of the Italian sports federation, offering a critical overview of Italian and European definition of public administration. Indeed, following the Italian normative framework, sports federation are formally private bodies, even though they act also to protect public interests. The article aims especially to understand whether sports federation acting to protect a public interest should fully comply with national and European rules enacted for the administrative sector, included those ones imposing transparency and limits to public expenditure. In the conclusion, the author suggests to take a functional approach, instead of a formalistic one, in order to apply administrative rules to sport federations only whether it is strictly necessary to protect a public interest, without affecting negatively their private autonomy.