The seaside concessions will be mapped, but the banning of licenses is still a long way off

The government has made a first obligatory step on the dossier of beach concessions, but it is a step that may lead nowhere. The Council of Ministers meeting this afternoon approved a decree to start the mapping of public goods concessions, such as the beaches, with the aim of “promoting maximum publicity and transparency, even in summary form, of the main data and information relating to the concessions of public goods”. The measure was placed on the agenda shortly before the start of the meeting, which was brought forward with respect to the initial call to ensure that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, expected in the evening in Brussels, also participated.

The provision is a legacy of the Draghi government’s competition law, which envisaged the adoption of an information system for detecting concessions of public goods within 11 months of last August. And so here is the Siconbep, a platform on which public administrations will have to communicate a series of information on the assets covered by the concession. According to some agencies that have seen the draft of the decree, the Mef will make use of Sogei for the implementation and management of the information system, the creation of which will cost 2 million euros, while for its management, maintenance and development it is the expenditure of 2 million per year has been authorized starting from 2024.

The background theme is that of bidding for licenses, on which Italy has been repeatedly called by Brussels and by some sentences of the European court of justice. Mapping should be a first step to go in this direction but the government has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not want to displease the seaside resorts. The open dialogue with the trade associations will be updated on 20 July, when the technical table coordinated by Palazzo Chigi will meet again with representatives of ministries, regions and representatives of the sector. In the last meeting that took place in early July, the government endorsed the idea proposed by the entrepreneurs, namely that of guaranteeing the competition required by Europe by assigning new beaches under concession instead of reassigning those already occupied. According to data provided by the Ministry of Infrastructures, there would in fact be hundreds of millions of square meters to be assigned because out of 460 million surveyed by the State property only 80 million would be occupied by factories and other activities. But it is said that the solution the government is working on is not compatible with European rules. The mapping will now serve to buy time and carry out the census to confirm a precise picture of the situation.