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National courts and administrative authorities are required to apply the relevant rules of EU law, disapplying provisions of national law that do not comply with them

According to EU law, for the award of concessions for occupation of maritime state property, Member States have to apply a selection procedure among potential candidates when the number of authorizations available for a given activity is limited due to scarcity of resources natural. The authorization is issued for an adequate limited duration and cannot include the automatic renewal procedure. Although these provisions have been transposed into the Italian legal system, a law of 2018 2 provided that the existing concessions were extended until 31 December 2033, in order to have the time necessary to carry out all the essential activities for the reform of the concessions.
In accordance with this law, the Municipality of Ginosa extended, with a resolution of 24 December 2020, the occupation concessions of the maritime state property in its territory. Considering that this resolution violated the principles of competition and freedom of establishment, the Competition and Market Authority (AGCM) served the said municipality with a reasoned opinion, reminding it of the obligation of a prior public procedure and noting that the national provisions for the automatic extension of concessions had to be disregarded.
Since the Municipality of Ginosa did not comply with its opinion, the AGCM appealed to the Regional Administrative Court for Puglia with a direct appeal for the annulment of the resolution of the Municipality of Ginosa. While deeming that the national provisions are incompatible with Directive 2006/123 on services in the internal market, the Regional Administrative Court for Puglia has doubts about the self-executing nature of the directive and the exclusionary effect of non-conforming national rules. Furthermore, that judge disagrees with the opinion of the Italian Council of State according to which directive 2006/123 is a liberalizing and not a harmonizing directive. From this the Regional Administrative Court for Puglia deduces that this directive should have been adopted unanimously and not by a majority of the votes of the Council.
The Regional Administrative Tribunal for Puglia consequently refers various questions to the Court of Justice for a preliminary ruling aimed at verifying the scope, validity, nature and effects of the application of the directive.

With its judgment today (C-348/22), the Court states, in the first placethat the directive applies to all concessions for occupation of maritime state property, irrespective, in this regard, of whether they present a certain cross-border interest or whether they concern a situation whose relevant elements all remain confined within a single member state.
Secondly, EU law does not prevent the scarcity of natural resources and available concessions from being assessed by combining a general and abstract approach, at national level, and a case-by-case approach, based on an analysis of the coastal territory of the municipality in question . It is necessary that the criteria adopted by a Member State to assess the scarcity of usable natural resources are based on objective, non-discriminatory, transparent and proportionate parameters.
Thirdly, the examination did not reveal any element capable of affecting the validity of the directive on services in the internal market. Since, on the one hand, the legal basis of an act must rest on its purpose and content and, on the other hand, the purpose of the directive is to facilitate the exercise of the freedom of establishment for providers as well as the free movement of services , the Council correctly acted by qualified majority, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty.
Fourthlythe obligation for the Member States to apply an impartial and transparent selection procedure among potential candidates, as well as the prohibition of automatically renewing an authorization issued for a given activity are set out in an unconditional and sufficiently precise way by the directive.
Since these provisions produce direct effects, national courts and administrative authorities, including municipal ones, are required to apply them, and also to disapply the rules of national law that do not comply with them.

Does the reference for a preliminary ruling enable national courts, in the context of a dispute before them, to ask the Court about the interpretation of EU law or about its validity? of a Union act. The Court does not settle the dispute because it is up to the national judge to settle the case in accordance with the decision of the Court. This decision is equally binding on the other national courts to which a similar problem is referred.