This is a small revolution, certainly still incomplete, but one that has brought relief to the Italian government. On the evening of Wednesday 4 September, Rome announced that it had closed its dispute with the European Commission over coastal concessions. A summit between the three heads of the Italian executive, Giorgia Meloni and her two deputy prime ministers, Matteo Salvini and Antonio Tajani, resolved the situation. Salvini, leader of the League (far right), did not want to hear about the regulation of the coastal concessions sector, even though Raffaele Fitto, Minister for European Affairs and future European Commissioner, had been patiently negotiating for weeks with Brussels.
For years, the Commission has been demanding transparency and clarity in the management of this sector, in which Italy stands out in Europe – more than 6,500 coastal concessions on the Peninsula, representing nearly 300,000 employees according to the Ministry of Labour – with the obligation to open the sector to competition.
Adopted at the end of 2006, the “Bolkestein” directive on the liberalisation of services in the European Union requires the creation of tenders and has so far made more than one Italian government cough, refusing to alienate the “beach lobby”, which is particularly powerful in the country. For more than half a century, numerous Italian coastal concessions have been handed down from generation to generation, often in total opacity. The Italian state is said to receive around 100 million euros a year in royalties for these concessions, a negligible amount for a sector valued at 15 billion euros, according to the consultancy firm Nomisma.
A long balancing act
Exasperated by Italy’s reluctance to regulate the sector, the Commission has launched infringement proceedings against the country. The hatchet appears to have been buried. Cooperation between Rome and Brussels has made it possible to find a balance between the need to open up the concession market and the opportunity to protect the legitimate expectations of current concessionaires.” welcomed the Chigi Palace in a press release. “It is an old and complex issue that is closed,” Minister Raffaele Fitto (Fratelli d’Italia) added on X.
In order to convince Brussels, the Italian government has passed a decree-law which now introduces the obligation to launch calls for tenders before June 2027 for the awarding of beach facilities. According to this new regulation, future coastal concessions will also have a minimum duration of five years and may not exceed twenty years. The government’s text also specifies that it will be up to the future manager of a coastal facility to reimburse the previous concessionaire for the part of the investments made that have not been amortised.
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