Closes access to the sea with a gate: investigated for land invasion
The Supreme Court: the municipality's OK is not enough, a (collective) right of constitutional rank is violated
It is illegitimate to place entrance gates in correspondence with a municipal road of access to the sea, making it de facto exclusive: the right of access to the sea, in fact, must always be guaranteed. This was ruled by the second penal section of the Court of Cassation in its sentence 34955/2025, which ruled on the case of the seventy-three-year-old owner of a seaside resort company in Puglia.
Priority to the right of access to the sea
Non è sufficiente l’autorizzazione del Comune, nonostante la strada in questione sia municipale, perché l’ente territoriale deve sempre rispettare le fonti sovraordinate, nel caso specifico legge nazionale e normativa comunitaria. La legge 296/2006 sancisce l’obbligo di garantire accesso e transito gratuiti a chi desidera raggiungere il bagnasciuga, anche per la balneazione. Tra il cittadino e il suo diritto di accedere al mare, che ha rango costituzionale, non si possono frapporre concessioni di spazi demaniali marittimi o di vie di accesso al mare. La Suprema Corte ricorda, inoltre, come il principio costituzionale di tutela della personalità umana sia in relazione anche con il paesaggio, rendendo così prevalente la funzionalità del bene per l’interesse della collettività anche sull’aspetto demaniale.
The orientation of case law
The administrative justice - Campania Regional Administrative Court, pronouncements 1498 and 1499/2024 - has also reiterated that it is the task of the Regions to balance the areas granted to private with the free beaches and to identify the passages that allow free access and transit to those who wish to reach the shoreline also for bathing. And even the Council of State (ordinance 2543/2015) has emphasised that the obligation to allow access and transit to the sea is even a "necessary clause" to obtain the bathing concession.
Bathing concessionaires, therefore, in spite of a widespread practice on many shorelines - even prestigious ones - can never and in no way impede, with structural limitations, the access and transit of citizens. For these reasons, argues the Court of legitimacy, the owner of the Taranto concession, in addition to having the 'exclusive' gate seized, remains under investigation for the crime of "land invasion".
