The ban on arranging umbrellas, sunbeds and deck chairs on coastal defense works to give them in concession to private individuals has been lifted. After all, says the president of the Liguria Region John Toti on the sidelines of the presentation of the budget maneuver in the Regional Council, “all cities have usable coastal defense works, think of the cliff of Porto Venere”.
Thus, explains Toti, in 2023 “it will be possible to install umbrellas and sunbeds on some coastal defense works in Liguria, something today totally excluded from any type of economic use all year round. Today, if you have a cliff that was financed by a coastal defense measure you can’t put a pot on it, sunbeds and give it in concession. We will lift the ban where the safety regulations allow it, at least at certain times of the year”.
In particular, the managers of bathing establishments will be able to install their own equipment, provided that it is removable and not definitive, even on artificial reefs and other sea structures that already fall within their concession, subject to a mandatory safety check.
An announcement that provokes an immediate, furious reaction from environmental associations. Represented by Stefano Salvettiregional president of Adinconsum but above all a member of the National Coordination of the Free Sea (CoNaMaL): “It is a total aberration, civic sense is being lost. Instead of turning the clock back in time as regards the beaches, today practically all to private individuals, we also grant them the cliffs, always in the name of a tourism that only we have in mind”.
Salvetti recalls that “in Spain and France, 80 percent of the coasts are public, and it’s not that there aren’t entrepreneurs there. Instead here, when someone comes from abroad, they get pissed… because they have to walk miles before finding beaches free”.
In Liguria, according to Legambiente’s 2021 “Beaches” report, 69.9 percent of the 114 kilometers of beaches on the coast are occupied by establishments. A record that puts the Region in front of Emilia Romagna with 69.5 percent of occupied beaches and Campania with 68.1 percent, compared to the national average which stops at 42.1 percent.
In recent days, the Minister of Tourism and entrepreneur of the seaside sector Daniela Santanché he declared that “it would be good to first assign those beaches that are now absolutely not served… if one goes to see the beaches in wonderful places, the so-called free beaches, there are drug addicts, waste. No one thinks of keeping them in order”. Then she added: “I don’t want to privatize them but equip them so that those with less possibilities can go there without paying but if they want to go to the kiosk he can do it”.
For Salvetti “it would be enough to redefine concession fees suitable for private individuals, and with that money to fix the beaches”.