Brescia Court Suspends Limone Boat Slip Regulation After Peroni Appeal

The municipal regulation for the allocation of boat slips in the two state-owned ports, approved last September by the Limone council chamber, will almost certainly need to be rewritten.

The judges of the Brescia Tar (Regional Administrative Court of Brescia) have, in fact, accepted the appeal submitted by the Peroni company, which operates boat rental and transport services with three motorboats. They had been deprived of two of the three docks authorized for over forty years by the Region in the New Port of the town.

The administrative judges have therefore decided to suspend the measure, while they will issue the final ruling at a later date. However, it is almost certain that the sentence will confirm this initial verdict. Its effects could trigger a chain reaction, as other lakeside municipalities — including Padenghe — have adopted regulations that allocate only one boat slip to taxi operators and rental services. This principle was seen almost immediately as potentially unlawful because the Region, in transferring functions related to navigation and port management to the municipalities, never mentioned the possibility of reducing the number of boat slips for rental companies and reserving just one in the port.

In the specific case, the beneficiary was Luca Peroni, son of Romolo Peroni, a boat rental operator since the 1970s in Limone, and currently owner of the company «Garda Escursioni». This is the same company involved in the tragic sinking on August 12, 1998, in which three British tourists died. In the application submitted last autumn, he requested a concession for three slips, one for each of his boats used for passenger transport, but the municipality refused, granting only one slip.

For the other two vessels, which are notably large, he would have had to find slips elsewhere—considering that Limone does not have other docks. In his appeal, lawyer Alberto Luppi, who defended the interests of the Peroni company, argued that although the regulation provided for it, “the presence of a representative of taxi and rental operators was not acknowledged,” while the same measure did not incorporate the regional regulation that established priority, in the final ranking of slip allocations, specifically to taxi operators, regardless of how many boats they had in service.

Furthermore, for Peroni, it would have been a “severe economic damage” to have to give up the mooring and rental of two motorboats, for which “1 billion and 300 million lire were invested,” as well as the employment of six employees to provide the service. As mentioned earlier, other municipalities have adopted this criterion. In Padenghe, it is understood that some are willing to fight to defend their interests.