As noted by the Legambiente Italian Beaches report, in May 2021, concessions on coastal state property there are more than 61 thousand, an increase compared to 53 thousand in 2018. Of these 12,166 are concessions for plants, compared to almost 11 thousand in 2018, with a growth of 12.5 percent. It is estimated that from 2000 to 2021 they have doubled.
Emilia-Romagna is the region with the largest number of bathing establishments (1,063, about 10 percent of the national total), followed by Tuscany (914) and Liguria (807).
The free beaches are regulated by regional regulations. Some regions, such as Puglia and Sardinia, allocate 60 percent of the beaches for free use. In others, such as Tuscany, Basilicata, Sicily, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Veneto, there is no specific quota for free beaches.
The issue, however, is not linked only to the numbers, but also to the quality of the beaches: “In many municipalities the only areas not under concession are those near the discharge of rivers, ditches or sewers and therefore where you can lie down to sunbathe but bathing is prohibited ”, explains Legambiente.
On the basis of data from the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, elaborated by lavoce.info, of over 13 thousand bathing concessions for tourist use for which data on the fee are available, only 3,157 provide for a annual fee more than five thousand euros, while more than half have rents of less than two thousand euros.
According to the latest data on state revenues (2019), the total amount of the royalties is equal to 115 million euros, of which only 83 have been collected. In addition, there are 235 million euros of fees still to be paid since 2007. The turnover of the bathing establishments has been estimated by Nomisma, a company that carries out market research, at about 15 billion euros per year.
Most of the Italian beaches are touched by bathing waters of good or excellent quality. But 7.2 percent of the beaches (72 kilometers) are not accessible due to pollution (port, airport, industrial areas and high rocky coasts are excluded from the calculation).
The regions where the amount of coastal areas off-limits to bathing is highest are Sicily and Campania, which have about 29.7 and 14.9 kilometers of unusable beach (equal to 17.2 and 17.9 percent of the sandy coasts respectively. of the two regions).
According to the Italian Coastal Landscape Observatory of Legambiente, between 1970 and 2020 the kilometers of coast in erosion have tripled, leading to the disappearance of at least 40 million square meters of beaches.
The phenomenon will continue to worsen with the climate crisis, favoring floods and extreme weather events. The greatest criticalities emerge in the center-south, as in Calabria where 278 kilometers of coastline are at risk of erosion.
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