La proroga ope legis delle concessioni demaniali marittime dalla sent. 1/2019 della Corte costituzionale al Decreto Rilancio (sentenza 9 gennaio 2019, n. 1)

The Italian legal system has always struggled when confronted with the task of ensuring the compliance with the EU principles of competition and freedom of establishment, as well as the balancing of those principles with the protection of legal certainty and the investments made by private actors in crucial sectors. A stark example of this issue is given by the legal framework for the granting of concessions of State-owned maritime property used for touristic and recreational purposes, which has been for several years at the center of a heated debate. The topic was the subject of several landmark judgements from the Court of Justice of the European Union, which stigmatized the long-standing national habit of automatic extending existing concessions of State-owned property for tourist activities having cross-border interest. Notwithstanding those judgements, provisions of such nature have still been put in place both at regional and national level, such as with the Regional law no. 26/2017 of the Regione Liguria that was declared to be unconstitutional by the Italian Constitutional Court with its first judgement of 2019, which this article aims at describing. In this context, where what appears to be an overwhelming convergence of national and European courts has urged the national legislator to adopt a comprehensive regulation on the matter, the emergency rules adopted by the Italian Government in connection to the Covid-19 pandemic present obvious shortcomings, in that they once again consolidate the status quo by postponing the establishment of a competitive environment, to the final detriment of environmental protection, social cohesion and the optimization of State resources.