Balneari, Maurizio Gasparri’s plan: forbidden public beaches

If the real objective is really to stimulate competition in the market for beach concessions, then there is a solution: mapping the Italian coastal state heritage, identifying the areas not yet occupied and, finally, bidding for them. So without having to destroy the already active companies, which with the work of years have contributed to the development of tourism in our country”. The vice-president of the Senate Maurizio Gasparri, who has always been close to the galaxy of the Italian coastal sector, goes straight to the point of the “concessions issue”, placing at the center of the debate a possible cornerstone for the solution of the problem: the mapping of the coasts .
Senator Gasparri, what do you mean by “mapping the coasts”?

“Mapping the assets of the coastal state is an old topic, already foreseen in the competition law approved by the Draghi government, as well as an absolute priority. Mapping is to carry out an official, punctual, precise and homogeneous survey of the state of our coasts – which, I remind you, is 8 thousand kilometers long – and to establish which portion of the state’s coastal, maritime, river and lake heritage is occupied and a lot, on the other hand, it’s free ».
Why could this operation be the turning point in solving the problem of beach concessions?

«Because through mapping, the many areas not yet occupied must be identified, in order to put them up for tender for new operators. On the one hand, this would allow for “real” competition and, on the other hand, it would safeguard the thousands of already active seaside businesses, which, with their work, form the backbone of Italian tourism. Finally, in this way it could also be demonstrated that coastal resources are not at all “a scarce resource”, as many defend, which would automatically invalidate the application of the Bolkenstein directive, which is based precisely on the principle of scarcity. In short, there is a lot of space ».
So why so much resistance – like the EU in recent days – to this type of solution?

“The latest EU positions are surprising. I found it shameful that precisely on the days when, after the sinking of Crotone, the dead were still being counted along the Italian coasts, a spokesperson arrived from Brussels to attack Italy’s bathing concessions. There is an obsessive insistence on this subject that I can only explain with the total distance from the real world that the European institutions suffer from, closed in their ivory tower made only of papers and numbers and far from the real lives of people. In some issues they are no longer very credible, as in the competition ».
However, “competition” is one of the most used words when it comes to spas.

“That is exactly why I say this. What is the credibility of an institution that claims competition for small Italian coastal companies and does not do the same with large multinationals? There are giants of commerce that in Europe benefit from a minimum rate of 15%, against the more than 50% that a normal trader pays: if it is not anti-competitive to kneel before the multinationals, chasing the lifeguards in the name of competition, it is not so ‘other that it is. I only hope that this attitude is due to the false narrative built on seaside resorts and nothing else”.
What false narrative are you referring to?

«An entire newspaper would not be enough to analyze it. We can start with the story that would like the bidding of concessions among the conditionalities of the Pnrr: false; then there is the abnormal turnover in the face of low rents: this is also false, not least because the current government has just raised them by 25%; again, there are those who wish the “beach feature” was scarce: false, again. What is right must be done, but destroying small companies in the name of shell competition, on top of that based on false assumptions and with more than viable solutions on the table, makes no sense at all”