There is no lack of possible conditions nor, on the other hand, no possibility that Europe will grant the tenth floor of the Germaneto Citadel the privilege of creating a state in its own right, even if it is outside the EU. The beach concessions must be put up for tender in Europea, all and not just for new spaces to be occupied, otherwise the heavy community sanction against the Calabria Region is more or less certain. Much more, rather than less. It is with a heavy hand that Legambiente Calabria intervenes on the story of recent days which brings together seaside resorts and electoral needs.
A seaside-electoral start to June which saw the dynamism of the Citadel on the matter imposed on the stage. No competition (reaffirmed several times by the Council of State) and obviously by an EU directive which has expired in abundance but in regulatory silence de facto extension to the current managers by virtue of a principle of non-participation in the directive itself. In the series, it applies to those who have very few beaches and very few free ones, Calabria does not suffer from these “evils” so from this point of view it may not even be part of the EU. And that’s not all, because according to this “local” direction, if you really have to go there, you go for the enormous free spaces that remain in Calabria, effectively reducing, according to Legambiente, the natural heritage free from commercial commitments.
«Legambiente Calabria expresses its clear opposition to the regional decisionWhy violates European rules and jurisprudential guidelines regarding maritime state concessions, protection of competition, consumer rights and environmental protection, opening up, in fact, to a further, unsustainable, substantial privatization of public areas. Furthermore, with a very recent sentence of 20 May 2024 n. 4481, the Council of State returned once again to the issue of automatic extensions, stating that all beach concessions must be awarded through a comparative procedure that the entities are obliged to initiate».
Therefore, according to Legambiente, there is no possibility of being part of a separate “State”. While on the scarcity of primary resources which would not involve Calabria «the Council of State reiterated the self-executing nature of the directive and the impossibility of providing automatic extensions pending deeds and even in the case of not scarce resources, there may be an obligation to arrange a comparative procedure, because the burden of carrying out this procedure for the concession of state property does not only have the Bolkestein directive as its sole source, but also the art. 49 of the TFEU and the freedom of establishment, the assignment having to be carried out according to criteria of transparency and impartiality. The Calabria Region, with the decision taken, is therefore entering the dead end of the risk of a new community infringement with the related costs in terms of sanctions and is hypothesizing an unacceptable subtraction of beaches currently enjoyed freely and free of charge by Calabrians and tourists ».
The “seaside-electoral” position of the last few hours has therefore far from contained side effects. What Anna Parrettapresident of Legambiente Calabria, considers «senseless». «The Calabria Region should limit the occupation of the beaches and existing state concessions should be assigned based on rigorous environmental and social sustainability criteria, to safeguard the beaches and marine waters from any cause of pollution and degradation. The future of Calabrian tourism depends on environmental protection.”
For at least 15 years theEU asks Rome to block automatic renewals concessions to historic operators and to open the market to new companies through tenders. The Italian government has not complied with the request, despite the infringement procedure opened by Brussels, and after having renewed the concessions until 31 December 2024, it is considering expanding the beaches to be assigned to the resorts in such a way as to “save” the managers of existing plants. In this context, the Calabria Region, the first of the Italian Regions, suggests that it will not apply the Bolkenstein directive, maintaining that there is no scarcity of the beach resource in such a way that the current concessionaires can continue to operate and at the same time portions can be put out to tender of the current free Calabrian beaches.
According to “Beaches Report 2023” published by Legambiente, Calabria is among the regions most at risk. «The research, which analyzes six indicators, from the climate crisis to the risk of flooding, from inaccessible beaches to the polluted sea, reveals a picture of fragility for the Calabrian coastal territories which is not very reassuring. In terms of coastal land consumption also linked to the serious phenomenon of illegal building, Calabria marks the fourth growth value at a national level (+6.26% between 2006 and 2021) and the third in the ratio between coastal land consumption and regional surface”.
Also at a regional level, the Legambiente report reports the particularly high value – in relation to other regions – “of beach concessions, which correspond to 13.8 percent of the Italian total. In Calabria – where there are 614 km of beaches – the total number of state-owned maritime concessions is 4,665, of which 1,677 for bathing establishments, for a total of 29.4% of sandy coast occupied. All these reasons should lead the Calabria Region to limit the occupation of the beaches, raising the relative regional limit, currently only 30% compared to 60% in other regions such as Puglia and Sardinia. In short, the perspective we need to move towards is very different from that proposed by the regional council.” There is always time. Sooner or later this week will end.
