A treaty can be signed and still not be law: the Italy–UAE air services agreement of 2016 has never entered into force. AI-generated illustration.
Emirates wants to fly from Milan to Lima. Italian airlines want to stop it. ITA Airways, which had left Milan Malpensa almost three years ago, now says it will fly there too. Everyone is waiting for a decision from ENAC, Italy's civil aviation authority.
Almost nobody has noticed one detail. The treaty that most people assume governs the case, the air services agreement between Italy and the United Arab Emirates signed in Abu Dhabi in 2016, has never entered into force. ENAC says so in writing, in a reply dated 28 October 2026 to a request for public access to documents.
That changes the nature of the dispute. It is not a question of applying a treaty. It is an administrative decision, taken case by case, by an authority under pressure from all sides, at an airport that is short of room for the very passengers this route would carry.
The full article explains what a "fifth freedom" right is, what the released documents say and what they leave open, why Italian airlines want the traffic concentrated on Rome, how ITA's counter-move could backfire on Milan, and why the decision matters well beyond Peru, Brazil included.