Abstract
The article analyses the open-ended comodato of farmland, a civil-law arrangement under which land is granted for gratuitous use, and its borderline with agricultural leases is subject to the mandatory regime of Law No. 203 of 3 May 1982. Moving from recent Corte di Cassazione case law, it reconstructs the doctrinal and judicial criteria used to distinguish genuine comodato from disguised leases and clarifies the related procedural consequences (jurisdiction of specialised agrarian sections and application of the summary proceedings under Legislative Decree No. 150 of 1 September 2011). The analysis shows that the presence of consideration (including payments in kind), the allocation of productive enjoyment and organisational control over farming activities are the key indicators triggering re-characterisation as an agricultural lease and the operation of statutory reconduction. A comparative overview of France, Germany, Spain and England & Wales situates the Italian solution within a broader European context. The article ultimately proposes a normative and evidential test, translated into a practitioner-oriented checklist, to guide courts and practitioners in future disputes.