Antitrust: no more extensions for bathers, speed up tenders

Avoiding further extensions and automatic renewals, resorting instead to "competitive allocation methods for maritime, lake and river concessions". This is the warning included in a report that the Antitrust Authority has sent to the Anci and the State-Regions Conference, in which it emphasises that "the continuous recourse" to extensions violates the principles of competition and "favours the distorting effects connected to unjustified position gains attributed to concessionaires". The Authority therefore urges the entities "to ensure that all selective procedures for the assignment of new concessions are carried out as soon as possible" and that the assignment "takes place no later than 31 December 2024".

While the beach concessionaires are divided on theshutdown of beach umbrellas on 9 August, the government is working on the new plan to be submitted to the European Commission. After a series of confidential discussions with various representatives of the majority, one working hypothesis seems to have overtaken the others in the field and a draft is ready. The details, anticipated by Il Sole 24 Ore, envisage an articulated mechanism of dates, between tender procedures and new extensions. In the minimum case the current concessions would remain valid until 31 December 2025, in the extreme case until 31 December 2029.

As things stand, according to the government, despite the Council of State rulings and the EU's findings, the existing concessions are effective until 31 December 2024 or until the end of 2025 if there are objective reasons preventing the conclusion of the tenders. The text under consideration goes further. It envisages new criteria for starting the tenders according to EU law but provides for a first dry extension, until 31 December 2025. However, this is not enough. At the same time, if this line discussed in recent days goes through, the government intends to relaunch the work of mapping the coastline, integrating the first version as requested by Brussels both with disaggregated data on a regional basis and with qualitative data: in other words, it is not enough to say that there are free beaches, but it must be understood whether they are really accessible, whether they are attractive to potential new concessionaires.

"The Antitrust report? It had made others, to individual local authorities as well as to Parliament. The problem is that the Authority refers to a generalised automatic extension, which is clearly impractical. What is being challenged on the basis of European law is the way in which extensions are granted'. This was said by Antonio Capacchione, president of the Italian Bathers' Union, which together with Fiba animated last Friday's umbrella protest. "We have always agreed with the idea of a differentiated extension," he explains. "After all, it is a fact that the Court of Justice has made it clear that Bolkestein applies provided the resource is scarce. So mapping is fundamental, then we can discuss whether to improve it. And from the press rumours it seems to me that the government is moving in the direction of just such extensions,' he concludes.