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ROME — Thousands of Italian beach installations closed their sun umbrellas Friday in a “strike” against European Union rules aimed at opening up the sector to competition.
Beach clubs, or businesses licensed to rent out sunbeds and umbrellas, are routinely passed through families from generation to generation across the country.
But under EU-mandated rules, their licenses will be up for public tender next year.
Beach club operators point out they have invested in their businesses, and warn of 300,000 jobs at stake.
But an EU competition directive in 2006 said that concessions should be allocated through a competitive bidding process.
Successive Italian governments have delayed applying the rules, wary of the powerful beach club lobby. But after legal proceedings at the Court of Justice of the European Union and with Rome risking a new EU probe on the issue, the auctions were finally set for 2025.
Italy’s Europe Minister Raffaelle Fitto said at a press conference this week that there are “ongoing” and “complex” discussions with the European Commission.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, which has close ties to beach club operators, said on Thursday that the government was pushing the EU commission on “the right of first refusal and compensation.”
“I hope that Europe gives us the OK, otherwise we will have a problem,” he said at a political event in the Tuscan beach town of Marina di Pietrasanta.
Maurizio Rustignoli of the FIBA beach club business association said that 80 percent of beach clubs adhered to a so-called polite strike, closing umbrellas Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Operators have threatened full-day strikes if the government does not offer a satisfactory response.
But not everyone sympathizes with the beach clubs, which according to a report by environmental association Legambiente, occupy 90 percent of the coast in some beach towns.
The clubs benefit from disproportionately low rents, paying collectively around €115 million for the concessions — while taking in around €30 billion in revenue.
Opposition politicians said that bathers should use the strike as an opportunity to reclaim the beaches. Angelo Bonelli, leader of the Greens and Left Alliance, called on Italians to “peacefully invade the beaches with your umbrellas and towels, because now is the time to say: Enough to private beaches.”
