Beach concessions extended only until the end of 2023

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09 November 2021 The current regime of extension of concessions on beaches will only be valid until 31 December 2023: from the following day there will be no possibility of further extension, not even through legislation, and the sector will in any case be open to competition rules.

The Council of State, deciding on the dispute between local administrations and bathing concessionaires, established a peremptory deadline, after which "all state-owned concessions must be considered ineffective, regardless of whether there is - or not - a substitute in the concession" and the sector will be open to competition.   

The decision was awaited, not only by the parties involved. With the provision on competition, the government has not solved the knot of liberalization of bathing concessions, on which a conflict with the European Union on the internal market is hanging. Just yesterday from executive sources it was leaked the intention to prepare a new intervention after the sentence. But it is a divisive issue.

"Italian beaches and markets are not on sale, Brussels bureaucrats and their accomplices resign" promises Lega leader Matteo Salvini. The sentence "represents a fatal blow for Italian seaside tourism," says the president of the Brothers of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, who asks the government to report to Parliament. On opposite positions, Riccardo Magi (+ Europe), for whom the "Council of State orders what we have been asking for for years" and now the Competition bill must be adjusted. For the deputy of the Democratic Party, Umberto Buratti, an organic reform is immediately needed.

And the entrepreneurs of the sector sound the alarm. "A sector with around one million workers becomes highly unstable", says Marco Maurelli, president of Federbalneari Italia.   

According to the Council of State, the competition, in addition to being imposed by EU law, "is extremely valuable for guaranteeing citizens a management of the national coastal heritage" and contributing "to a significant extent to economic growth and, above all, to the recovery of investments. that the country needs ". In fact, the 15-year extension of the concessions introduced in 2018 with the Budget law was rejected but, "in order to avoid the significant socio-economic impact that would derive from an immediate and generalized forfeiture of all existing concessions", for to allow the preparation of the notices and "in the hope that the legislator will intervene to rearrange the matter", the concessions will continue to be effective for another two years.   

"The national laws that have ordered (and that in the future should still have) the automatic extension of state-owned maritime concessions for tourist-recreational purposes, including the moratorium introduced in correlation with the epidemiological emergency from Covid-19", established the Council of State, are in conflict with the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union and with the Bolkestein Directive.

And "the existence of a right to the continuation of the relationship in the hands of the current concessionaires must be excluded", who will be able to participate in the tenders that must be announced.