Managing Inflation Risk in Megaprojects: Contract Law and International Best Practices

The writing deals with the problem of the current inflation’s level in megaprojects, in order to avoid that it leads to their failure. Firstly, the paper focuses its attention on the megaprojects’ contracts concluded when the purchasing power has been low and stable for a long time. In relation to these cases, the present devaluation of money is an extraordinary and unpredictable event, at least because it is due mainly to the war between Russia and Ukraine, and partly to the long Covid19 economics effects too. As a result, both under many European contract laws and international models it can be addressed in terms that involving, directly or indirectly, the client in a renegotiation, whose goal is to rebalance the megaprojects contract’s performances considering the new reality. Secondly, the author tries to identify best practices in relation to contracts that has been concluded when the inflation was already at current level, or it was predictable that it would have been such a strong rise. In these situations a good solution would be the so-called stabilization clauses, as foreseen by a recent Italian statute in the field of public procurement, and for megaprojects contracts by NEC and Fidic models.