Published on August 20, 2024 at 7:00 p.m.
Read later Google News Share
Facebook Twitter Email Copy link
Send
Reading time: 3 min.
Free access
ITALIAN CHRONICLES. The private beaches, which extend along the coasts of the Peninsula, have become a very lucrative business. A standoff between the owners of the concessions and the European Union that has lasted for twenty years.
Having invented the Commedia dell’arte, Italy organized on August 9 a brilliant little spectacle that has certainly never taken place anywhere else: the strike of the bathing establishments. To protest against a measure under discussion in Parliament, the private beaches kept their parasols closed for two hours! No one had yet realized that the ” seaside resorts “, (spa operators) as the managers of these establishments are called, were one of the most powerful corporations in the country. They became known a few years ago, when the Italian Parliament deliberately ignored the European Bolkestein Directive, named after the commissioner who had proposed it in 2006. This directive (the bête noire of the spas because it contravenes, according to Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, the freedom of peoples) establishes that the management of beaches must be the subject of European calls for tender open to all. This may seem like a trivial fact in the field of competition, but not for Italy.
The seaside resorts are fiercely opposed to this. And for good reason: the Peninsula, which has the longest stretch of coastline in the European Union (around 7,914 km), also has the highest percentage of spaces occupied by private establishments (approximately 43% sandy coasts). All forms of concession combined, it is estimated that more than 50% of the beaches are in fact withdrawn from free and unhindered use. Even rocky coasts are beginning to be taken over: sophisticated systems of piles allow you to transform steep cliffs into comfortable terraces. All in all, there are few beaches with free access, most of them not maintained by the municipalities and, on the hottest days of summer, crowded beyond decency. But the seaside resorts do not only want freedom from work, they also want a guarantee of their income: The state earns around 100 million euros per year from seaside concessions ; on the other hand, these have a total turnover estimated at between 1 and 1.5 billion euros per year. In other words, the concessions are almost free. Stupid State? Complicit? Distracted? A bit of all of these. Another record to add: in many cases the beach concessions have been managed by the same people for decades, and renewed with countless extensions, so that the managers, who may have also had significant investments, consider it natural that they are guaranteed a duration if not eternal, at least very long.
Conflict of interest and business
The refusal to adopt the Bolkestein Directive, which has been going on for decades, has already earned Italy an infringement procedure. But the seaside resorts are calm: in 2019, they brought to the European Parliament a member of the Northern League, Massimo Casanova, owner of Papeete Beach in Milano Marittima (near Rimini), an establishment made famous years ago by the frequent visits of Matteo Salvini. And, since 2022, the Minister of Tourism has been none other than Daniela Santanchè, founder and co-owner for years of one of the most exclusive seaside establishments in the country, the Twiga in Forte dei Marmi (Tuscany).
The next extension of the concessions will run, it is said, until 2029. The business is increasingly important: Puglia, for example, which has become over the years one of the most popular places for seaside holidays (also due to the crazy passion that Giorgia Meloni and her team show for some resorts of the region), have one of the most expensive establishments in the country: for the summer of 2024, the Cinque Vele Beach Club in Marina di Pescoluse (in Salento) is asking up to 1,010 euros per day for a “front row” place, right on the seafront. Of course, you shouldn’t imagine that “a front row place” is simply a parasol and two deckchairs. Italian luxury establishments now furnish the beaches like the harems of “A Thousand and One Nights”: tents, curtains, sofas, cushions, air conditioners, ultra-modern televisions, Wi-Fi, champagne, international chefs, and even, for the most demanding, a private butler. Like a luxury hotel without walls, but on public land.
Every time the question of adopting the Bolkestein Directive (which has been dragging on for almost twenty years) arises again, the Italian seaside resorts invent a new claim. The latest is this: if the management of the beaches were really to be put out to international tender and some of them were to lose their former privilege, they ask that the State grant them compensation for the investments made over the years, since the enormity of the gains accumulated in the meantime does not seem to be sufficient compensation.
The ignored battle of free beaches
But while conflicts rage over paid beaches, what about free ones? In theory, about 70% of beaches should be. In reality, many of these beaches are difficult to access, either because they are located near the mouths of rivers or industrial areas, or because they are rocky and impassable. In Naples, free access to the sea is allowed for 200 meters compared to the 27 kilometers of coastline. In Palermo, the beach of Romagnolo, not suitable for swimming, remains free. In the north of Italy, Jesolo has 68% of its coastline privatized. Worse in Lignano Sabbiadoro, which has 83% of the beaches under concession.
This is the real problem. Even if the application of the Bolkestein directive seems to attract the attention of the left and environmentalist parties, no political force seems to have at heart the enlargement of free access beaches, their control and their proper maintenance by the municipalities (as in Spain, Greece and elsewhere), that is to say the rights and well-being of the majority of citizens.
