(Bloomberg) -- Italy has reached an agreement with the European Union to extend lucrative licenses for beach concessions until 2027, the latest delay following decades of clash between Rome and Brussels on the issue.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government said Wednesday that current concessions will remain in place until September 2027 and that competitive tenders will have to start by June 2027, according to a statement following a cabinet meeting.
The decision follows a strong lobbying activity by beach concession owners across the country, whose over 7,000 km of coastline are mostly managed by about 26,000 operators which offer touristic services, according to data from the beach owners’ union.
On Wednesday, the government also decided that operators that will lose their concessions will be compensated for the missed income, and new licenses will last between 5 and 20 years.
Italy has for years doled out licenses worth billions of euros in revenue without holding fair tendering process and renewed concessions automatically, ignoring calls by Brussels to assign them via competitive tenders. That has allowed some families to pass on concessions from one generation to another for decades, preventing new entrepreneurs from entering the market.
Italy had already been ordered by the EU to put the licenses up for tender in 2006, after the approval of a new European directive on competition, known as the Bolkestein directive.
Beach owners have protested and argued that competitive tenders would push up prices for consumers and drive out mom and pop concessions that have been servicing families of beach-goers for generations.
Prices currently vary widely depending on the region, going from 15 euros per day for loungers and a small parasol in some of the smaller beaches to hundreds of euros per day for luxury beach tents in places like Forte dei Marmi, a typical summer haunt of wealthy beach-goers from Milan.
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