Mondello: risk of riots, the state concession cannot be touched

A new chapter in the tangled saga of Italian beach concessions. At the centre of this new controversy on the edge of administrative law is the famous Mondello beach, the 'Palemitani beach': crystal-clear waters, fine sand and a backdrop of Art Nouveau villas.

The Council of Administrative Justice of the Sicilian Region (Cga) upheld the appeal by the Italo-Belgian real estate company (which has managed the beach for 107 years) and thus overturned the judgment of the Sicilian Regional Administrative Tribunal (TAR), which (rejecting the company's request for annulment) had in fact confirmed the validity of the decree of forfeiture of the state concession for the management of a large part of the entire beach. The forfeiture decree had been ordered by the Regional Department of Land and Environment. The council chamber for the collegial treatment of the precautionary application is now set for 14 May.

But the reasons for the decision are especially noteworthy. 'The Administrative Justice Council,' reads a note, 'considers that the imminence of the summer season is likely to create - in view of the enormous mass of people that usually tends to flock to the Mondello beach in that period - situations that, if not managed in an orderly manner by anyone, could give rise to a real danger to public order and safety.

In their ruling, the appeal judges refer to the legal principle of the 'periculum in mora' (danger in delay), 'not only and not so much,' continues the note, 'for the plaintiff company, but above all for the entire community, of such an entity as to override, limited to the coming months of May, June, July, August and September, any consideration pertaining to the fumus boni iuris', i.e. the probable grounds or appearance of the right claimed.

So much so that, for the Cga, 'the deliberation ultimately turns out to be largely recessive with respect to the primary need to preserve a context of orderly management of the main summer site of the city of Palermo'. And quoting another Latin locution, the Cga concludes: "Ne cives ad arma ruant", that is, so that citizens do not run to arms. As a result of the appeal judges' decision, the path taken by the Territory Department, which had put out to tender, with short tenders for three months and dividing into lots the portion of state property taken away from Italo-Belgian, which has been managing the beach for more than a century, comes to a halt.