Decision of the week · 1 and 3 June 2026
Sicilian Council of Administrative Justice (C.G.A.R.S.), twin judgments of 1 June 2026, No 328 and 3 June 2026, No 354
C.G.A.R.S., judicial section, judgment of 1 June 2026, No 328 and judgment of 3 June 2026, No 354
The full texts are freely available on the Italian administrative justice portal (in Italian).
In two twin judgments decided at the same hearing, the Sicilian Council of Administrative Justice reversed the first-instance rulings and annulled the favourable opinions issued by the Catania Heritage Authority (Soprintendenza), and with them the measure extending a maritime state property concession in the small harbour of Ognina. The outcome carries a principle of general reach: in areas under the highest level of protection, even a favourable opinion must explain its reasons.
The extension covered more than 2,100 square metres of water surface for floating pontoons, an open quay and a gazebo area, and included the partial demolition of a section of the existing pier. The site, however, falls within the archaeological interest areas of Ognina, placed by the landscape plan under protection level 1, the highest, and protected under Article 142(m) of Legislative Decree 42/2004: a harbour whose origins date back to the eighth century BC. The Heritage Authority had issued a first favourable opinion confined to the statement that landscape compatibility had been ascertained, followed by a supplementary opinion with prescriptions on the size of the moored boats and the visual minimisation of the works. The Catania Regional Administrative Court had dismissed the challenges brought by a sports club and an environmental association; the Council allowed the appeals.
The core of the rulings lies here: the Heritage Authority’s opinion, an expression of broad technical discretion, must rest on full and detailed reasons from which both the premises and the logical path of the assessment can be reconstructed. And the duty does not concern refusals alone: consent to works affecting an area under maximum protection is unlawful, for failure to state reasons and to investigate, where it does not explain why the works are compatible with the public interest underlying the constraint. The failure, the Council specifies, is a substantive defect in the exercise of the function, not a mere formal shortcoming.
The second lesson: prescriptions attached to a favourable opinion must have a determinate and verifiable prescriptive content. Formulas requiring that moored boats should not cause visual discomfort to the setting, or that the works should comply with criteria of visual minimisation in materials and colours, without dimensions or parameters, prescribe nothing: they leave the concession holder almost unlimited freedom, make any check impossible and turn a conditional opinion into an unconditional clearance, in contradiction with the declared need to protect the site.
The third and perhaps most innovative principle: where the project involves demolishing part of a structure of undisputed historical and archaeological interest, the Heritage Authority must explain, after an adequate inquiry, how the complete restoration of the site will be possible at the end of the concession, and with which construction and conservation techniques, without destroying or significantly reducing the cultural value of the asset. Omitting that assessment vitiates the opinion for failure to investigate.
The judgments also offer three procedural indications. An opinion issued in the conference of services as supplementary to, and partially amending, an earlier one does not replace it: the unamended parts of the first opinion remain at the basis of the final measure and their defects remain open to review. Judicial scrutiny of technical assessments remains external, within the limits of manifest unreasonableness, error as to the premises and self-contradiction. And the burden of proving that a challenge is out of time rests on the party raising the objection, with rigorous and unambiguous objective evidence.
For those developing projects on protected state property, the completeness of the reasons of a favourable opinion is no detail: it is the condition of the title’s stability, because an unreasoned clearance is a fragile one. For associations and for those protecting the territory, the two rulings confirm that judicial review of heritage opinions works in both directions. And for Catania, after the Port Master Plan case, this is another chapter in the relationship, ever more closely supervised by the administrative courts, between the city and its sea.