Tourism Law in Europe

6 The Constitutional Court 19 tried to remedy the imbalance, affirming the national character of the authorisation. The issue was brought back to the subject of professions, which is the concurrent competence of the State, according to art. 117, third paragraph, of the Constitution, and not to the subject of tourism, which is now the exclusive responsibility of the regions 20 . The Code gave a general definition of tourism professions and Law no. 97 of 2013 regulated the activity of guides, so that, according to art. 3, the qualification “is valid throughout the national territory”. However, this principle was attenuated by the ministerial decree of 7 April 2015, by which the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism identified approximately three thousand sites, for which the exercise of the activity was subject to a further and special qualification, the characteristics of which were defined by the subsequent ministerial decree of 11 December 2015. Although the qualification is national, the decree limited the effectiveness of the title to a specific area and, in fact, inhibited the activity of non-local guides. Both the ministerial decrees of 7 April 2015 and 11 December 2015 have been challenged before the administrative judge 21 , who has declared their illegitimacy, as they have excessively extended the scope of the specialist qualification, so as to make the national qualification useless, if not supplemented by the former. In fact, the list of approximately three thousand sites contained in the ministerial decree of 11 December 2015 has restricted the relevance of the national qualification to the point of almost annulling it, so much so that a system “that was intended (...) to simplify” has been transformed into “one that is necessarily twofold” 22 . Moreover, an excessive tightening of the regulation could have led to a segmentation of the activity; in the same area, with several sites subject to specialised authorisation, tourists would have needed as many guides as there were places to visit. The same professional would not have had all the authorisations and the activity would have been 19 See Constitutional Court, 1 October 2003, no. 303, in Giur. cost. , 2003, 2675, with a note by D’Atena, L’allocazione delle funzioni amministrative in una sentenza ortopedica della Corte costituzionale. See also Constitutional Court, 15 April 2010, no. 131, in Giust. civ., 2010, 1560; Constitutional Court 11 December 2009, no. 328, in Foro it., 2010, 350; Constitutional Court 8 May 2009, no. 138, in Giur. cost., 2009, 1485. 20 See Constitutional Court 19 December 2006, no. 424, in Giur. const., 2006, 4379; Constitutional Court 14 April 2006, no. 153, in Giust. civ., 2006, 1121. 21 See Cons. Stato, sez. VI, 13 April 2017, no. 3859. 22 See Cons. Stato, sez. VI, 13 April 2017, no. 3859, cit .