Agile Beach concessions will go to tender by June 2027those currently in progress will instead be valid until September of the same year. The concessionaires who eventually take over after the tenders will have to pay financial compensation to the previous owners. The Council of Ministers has approved the Infringement Decree, which also contains the long-awaited rules on state concessions that concern maritime coasts, lakes and rivers for tourism-recreational and sports purposes. The text has been discussed for months. The concessions had previously been extended by the executive until 31 December 2024, but the Council of State had deemed the extension illegitimate, asking to proceed immediately with the tenders.
The collaboration between Rome and Brussels, Palazzo Chigi reports, has allowed us to find a balance between the need to open the concessions market and the opportunity to protect the legitimate expectations of current concessionaires. The EU comments through its spokesperson for the Internal Market, Johanna Bernsel: “The European Commission welcomes the decision of Italy on the case of beach concessions. This follows constructive exchanges through which the Commission and the Italian authorities reached a common understanding on the legislative framework of the reform in the light of EU law, with a comprehensive, open and non-discriminatory solution covering all concessions to be implemented within the next three years”.
The opposition rises up and consumer associations who are talking about a mockery that will essentially change nothing and are asking Brussels not to ratify the government’s measure. The reform provides for the extension of the validity of the current concessions until September 2027, the obligation to start the tenders by June 2027. The new concessions will have a duration of one minimum of 5 to a maximum of 20 years, in order to ensure that the concessionaire can amortize the investments made. The text also provides for the hiring of workers employed in the previous concession, who received from this activity the main source of income for themselves and their families.
Among the central points of the measure is the compensation for the outgoing concessionaire paid by the incoming one and equal to the value of the depreciable and not yet depreciated assets and the fair remuneration of the investments made in the last five years. Among the evaluation criteria of the offers, the fact of having been the holder, in the previous five years, of a beach concession as the main source of income for oneself and for one’s family unit will also be considered. The opposition contests the measure. – “From the government yet another postponement on beach resorts: they make fun of beach resorts, block investments, create chaos in local authorities and once again lead Italy towards an EU infringement procedure. And all this just because they don’t have the courage to address an issue that has now gone too far”, says the MEP of the Democratic Party Matteo Ricci.
While the M5s underlines: “A three-year extension for the current concessions, already declared illegitimate by the Council of State, is the final farce of the Meloni government, after two years of total immobility”. For Riccardo Magi of +Europa instead the measure is: “A solution that puts a tombstone on competition for another three years with which Giorgia Meloni scrapes the bottom of the barrel of ridiculousness. I hope that the European Union mercilessly rejects the plan with which our government wants to circumvent the Bolkestein”.
Consumer associations are also against it. For Codacons: it is “taking the piss” that “does not resolve the issue of beach resorts in any way”. President Carlo Rienzi claims that the government wants to postpone “the solution to the problem until the Greek calends”. While the National Consumers Union underlines how “the new concessionaire is forced to pay the old one in order to have it evicted, with the effect that whoever takes over will obviously take it out on the final consumers, making them pay an even higher price for umbrellas and deck chairs”.