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The TAR of Liguria legitimizes the boarding tax in Genoa and the PD of Messina relaunches the battle for free ferries. For the dem provincial secretary Armando Hyerace, the ruling recognizes the principle of “objectively different conditions” between residents and non-residents, offering solid legal and constitutional support to the special law proposal “Messina, Gateway to the Mediterranean” deposited in the Senate. Below is the full text of Hyerace’s note:
«The ruling confirms an important principle: particular conditions may require special legislative instruments. The decision of the Liguria TAR on the boarding tax introduced in Genoa offers an idea that also directly concerns Messina and the Strait”, declares the provincial secretary of the Democratic Party Armando Hyerace.
«We are not thinking of new taxes on Sicilians or those who cross the Strait every day: our proposal goes in the opposite direction. The bill “Messina, Gateway to the Mediterranean”, already deposited in the Senate on the initiative of Senator Antonio Nicita, provides for free ferry travel for residents and businesses in the metropolitan area of the Strait through a special compensation fund, without any new tax on them”.
The secretary focuses on the passage of the decision that concerns residents.
«The TAR writes that the situation of residents and that of non-residents presents objective differences, such as to justify differentiated treatment in terms of taxation. And he adds that the exemption for passengers who reside in the islands to which the ship is headed is similarly justified, because the condition of those who take the maritime means to return home is different from that of those who embark on holiday. It is the exact principle on which our proposal is based.”
«A principle that today finds an even stronger foundation in article 119 of the Constitution. On the one hand, the State can allocate additional resources and carry out special interventions in favor of certain territories to remove economic and social imbalances; on the other hand, the peculiarities of the Islands are recognized and the measures necessary to remove the disadvantages deriving from insularity are promoted. This is exactly the logic from which the proposal for a special law for Messina was born.”
«The Strait is not a normal local mobility system. It is Sicily’s main land and sea gateway to the continent, crossed every year by millions of people, vehicles and goods, and this function simultaneously determines costs for those who live on the two shores and costs for the city that supports those flows. Our idea is simple: those who live in the Strait do not have to pay an additional price for insularity. It must be the State, as the Constitution itself requires today, to put in place tools and resources capable of compensating.”
«The free ferry, together with infrastructure investments, advantageous taxation and other interventions contained in the special law, responds to this principle: transforming the geographical condition of Messina and the Strait from a structural disadvantage to a development opportunity».
«The Genoa affair demonstrates that special instruments for territories that perform special functions are a choice that the legislator can make. For Messina, after the introduction of the principle of insularity in the Constitution, the reasons for doing so are even stronger. We ask that the bill be scheduled and that Sicilian parliamentarians, from all sides, support it with their votes.”