Gualtieri’s change of tack on the beaches

After two decades of resistance and ongoing legal disputes, local authorities are beginning to launch tenders for beach concessions – and are reaping the benefits. The most striking example is Rome: the city, led by Roberto Gualtieri, has launched and awarded 31 concessions along the Ostia coastline. On Thursday, the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) partially upheld an appeal concerning the procedures for evaluating bids, but in doing so effectively gave the green light to the tender process. But in other regions too – from Emilia-Romagna to Liguria and on to Campania – local councils are beginning to take action.

From a regulatory perspective, case law is unanimous. The latest ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, dated 10 July, reaffirmed that beach concessions must be put out to tender, ruling out automatic extensions or renewals. The ongoing political stalemate has, in fact, so far prevented the adoption of a unified and consistent regulatory framework. Minister Matteo Salvini had promised a standard tender notice ‘by the end of July’ – today is 1 August and there is still no sign of it. This has forced local councils to make do as best they can. There are two main issues: the procedures for allocating beachfront spaces (which do not necessarily have to remain fixed over time) and the criteria for selecting the successful bidders.

Rome offers a model that others might follow in the future. Pending the new plan for the use of beach areas – approved in June – the capital has launched temporary tenders, each lasting one year. “The interim tender,” the City Council explains, “includes technical and economic criteria. The former relate to the plans that operators have for the spaces entrusted to them, for example the construction of eco-sustainable facilities, the launch of social, cultural and sporting projects, and incentives for under-35s and women.” The economic aspect is the most innovative: local councils do not, in fact, share in the revenue from licence fees, which is almost entirely allocated to the State Property Office. Overall, operators pay around 100 million euros a year, averaging just 15,000 euros for each of the approximately 7,000 beach establishments, compared with an average turnover of 260,000 euros (the figures are from the Catholic University’s Observatory on Public Accounts and relate to 2021). Yet, a survey by Altroconsumo of a sample of 222 beach establishments across ten Italian resorts documented a 6 per cent increase in prices compared with 2025 and a 24 per cent rise over the last five years. To redress the balance, Rome has introduced a royalty of around 14 per cent of turnover. Unsurprisingly, a flurry of appeals were lodged on this point, but the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) rejected them. Indeed, the administrative judges praised the City of Rome’s manoeuvre: “Whilst the increased royalty does not necessarily ensure the selection of the most profitable bid in absolute terms (as the revenues that individual bidders would have generated cannot be predicted), it nevertheless offers prospective successful bidders the advantage of adapting to their own cost/revenue structure whilst, at the same time, ensuring greater profitability of the asset for the Treasury compared to the collection of the lease payment alone.”

Things will change further next year. The Beaches Plan envisages significant changes to the allocation of approximately 11.3 kilometres of coastline: 57.6 per cent will be reserved for public use (7.6 percentage points above the minimum level of 50 per cent required by law). Furthermore, restrictions are planned regarding the aesthetics and materials used in the concessions, of which there will be 50 in total (comprising 35 beach establishments, 11 catering outlets, 3 recreational and sports areas, and 1 boat hire business). At that point, tenders can be launched for multi-year concessions, thereby enabling larger-scale investment and further improvements in quality. The most underestimated benefit is that this facilitates any future changes, should future administrations deem them necessary: the expiry of the concessions creates a degree of flexibility that does not currently exist. Mayors are at the mercy of a situation inherited from the past, which they must manage but cannot change, and which does not even generate revenue for the local authority’s coffers: Rome has put an end to this absurdity.

After twenty years of guerrilla warfare, it is finally becoming clear that the barrage of criticism against the Bolkestein Directive is purely a case of corporate self-defence. Competition benefits local authorities, beachgoers and the most innovative beach operators.