«With a recently widespread public notice, the Municipality of Catanzaro has launched a” expression of interest “aimed at owners of ton commercial premises in the historic center to implement a project called temporary store. The declared intent is to attract regional and national production excellence, to be installed in private properties “agreed fee”, under the direction of the administration. Well, behind the apparently neutral language there is indeed yet another public planning operation, in which the Catanzaro municipality does not limit itself to coordinating, but is proposed as a central and active subject in the management of private spaces, promising-in return-generic “economic, tax and bureaucratic-administrative supports” “. This was stated in a note by the president of Confedilizia Calabria, Sandro Scoppa.
“Even more serious are the conditions imposed on the owners: obligation of urban and plant compliance, detailed documentation, renounces any enterprise in place with the municipal body, the absence of any debt to the administration. Added to this is the possibility that the municipal body, in full discretion, managers or business networks with which the owner will be called to relate to the signing of the contract. And there is not even the invitation to contribute to the expenses for any internal adjustments of the properties. Instead of removing obstacles, simplifying procedures and encourage free initiative, The administration – highlighted Scoppa – chooses to centralize, condition and bureaucratize. It presents itself as a “guarantor” of the project, but in fact it intrudes in relations between private individuals, limiting contractual freedom and violating the very principle of negotiating autonomy “.
But, according to the president of Confedilizia Calabria, “the most paradoxical aspect concerns the” agreed fee “proposed as the basis of the initiative: there is no national legislation or territorial agreement that allows to apply this mechanism to commercial properties. It is a concept borrowed improperly from the living sector – where it is based in Law 431/1998 – and arbitrarily translated to a completely different context, made of temporary, flexible, dynamic activities. The result? Private owners treated as temporary dealers of goods that instead belong to them fully. A market distorted by lawless constraints. A commercial desertification that, far from being contrasted, is aggravated by a planning and invasive vision. And all this while it would be urgently liberalizing, opening, simplifying ».
According to Scoppa, “Catanzaro does not need artificial projects imposed from above, but of trust in private property and in the market forces. Return freedom negotiating to the owners, removing regulatory obstacles and leaving room for the spontaneous initiative are the only roads that can be traveled to report real life in the historic center. Less common, more market. Less constraints, more freedom ».