The Regional Administrative Court for Liguria has judged the levy of three euros per passenger on cruises and ferries being considered an autonomous tax and not a right therefore not covered by the European Ports Regulation. The Second Section of the Regional Administrative Court rejected the appeal by which Shipowners, Assaagents, Large Fast Ships, Moby, Maritime Stations and a private citizen, Giulio Uras, asked to cancel the municipal surcharge on port embarkation fees established by the Municipality of Genoa.

The levy stems from the agreement between the State and the Municipality signed on 22 November 2022, the so-called "pact for Genoa". The city - as the sentence of the TAR recalls - was over-indebted, with a per capita debt of more than 1,000 euros per inhabitant, even if not in deficit, and had adhered to the procedure extraordinary rebalancing provided for by Law no. 234/2021 and by the Decree-Law no. 50/2022. In return, the entity benefits from a multi-year state contribution. The agreement provided for two measures: a increase in the municipal Irpef surcharge, with rates between 1% and 1.2% depending on the bracket, and the establishment of an additional on port boarding fees equal to three euros per person. The expected revenue was 24.9 million euros per year, of which 19.2 million million from personal income tax and 5.7 million from the port tax. The Municipality has raised the personal income tax as of 2022, but the boarding tax has been introduced only on 16 December 2025 with Resolution no. 72, three years after the agreement. In the same month, the institution brought all the Irpef rates at 1.2%, despite the fact that the Ministry of the Interior had The proposal to reshape the pact in this sense was rejected.

The applicants challenged the resolutions, the agreement and the note with which the Ministry accused the Municipality of the failure to fulfil its obligations for failure to establishment of the tax. The Port System Authority of the Western Ligurian Sea was constituted supporting the reasons of the applicants. The State administrations and the Municipality have raised objections of inadmissibility, which the TAR did not examined, because the appeal was considered unfounded on the merits.

The shipowners argued that there can be a surcharge only if there is a main tribute to attach it to, and that in the port of Genoa there are none on passengers. For the TAR, however, the term "additional" used by the law is improper: the legislator has created a derived own tax, reserved for municipalities with a large deficit or debt. Subordinate it to the choices of other authorities, taken for different purposes - for judges - would be illogical, and the tax nature is confirmed by the three requirements indicated by the case law: definitive asset reduction, absence of relationship with a intended to cover public expenses.

Furthermore, the TAR did not find any conflict with the European Ports Regulation. EU Regulation 2017/352 - recalls The judgment - regulates the rights that ship operators and owners of goods pay to use the infrastructure and port services. The Genoese tax, on the other hand, affects passengers, who are users of the transport service and not of the port, and it is not connected to port services. The TAR recalls a recent ruling of the Council of State on the additional port of Salerno and considers the complaints on competition to be general, because Lack of evidence of negative effects on competitiveness of the airport.

The applicants also argued that the personal income tax had already exceeded the revenue target on its own and that the tax was therefore superfluous. The judges of the TAR replied with three arguments. First, the law requires the application of the two measures together, as the conjunction "and" indicates. Second, the objective of the timetable has an indicative value, and the Municipality can propose a remodulation every year. Third, the higher collection of personal income tax (13.1 million in 2022, 25.9 in 2023, 36.8 in 2024) depends only on the rates: part derives from the growth of the Tax base, estimated at 7.44%, 14.86% and 24.87%. Adjusted, The effect of the rate increase is 7.7, 15.1 and 18.6 million, still below the 19.2 expected. The increase in is not decisive: after the growth of 2023 there is was a decline in 2024 for cruises, with data substantially confirmed in 2025.

The sentence then recalls that the Municipality justified the measure with the obligation to comply with the agreement and with the need to compensate for the inconvenience of port tourist traffic on roads, transport and urban hygiene. The Regional Administrative Court considers this purpose implicit in the law, recalling a ruling of the Council of State on Naples airport, and observes that there was no obligation to consult the Port Authority and the companies, because The resolution is a regulatory act, and in any case the subjects interested parties participated in the meeting of the committees of 10 December 2025. In that session - reads the - it was observed that the three euros are equivalent to the maximum at the price of an aperitif.

For the TAR, the issues of constitutionality are manifestly unfounded. The judges exclude that the tax violates territoriality: the port also falls within the municipal territory, and the Municipality is a multi-purpose entity general purposes that may, for example, apply the IMU to the areas concessions. They also exclude the violation of the reservation of the law, because the law establishes a prerequisite, subjects liabilities and maximum amount, while the Municipality is responsible for the regulation of detail, and also exclude the violation of the capacity contribution: the cruise expresses a spending capacity and - According to the ruling - even the ferry ticket does so, with references to the tourist tax and the landing fee.

Finally, according to the TAR, exemptions from the tax do not are discriminatory. Residents of Genoa, residents of the destination islands and the security forces, firefighters and civil protection personnel on duty. For the Regional Administrative Court, the situations are objectively different, as the residents do not produce the inconveniences that the tax is intended to compensate, and are already burdened by the increase in personal income tax; those who return home in Isola does not travel like those who go on vacation. The European judgments cited by the plaintiffs then concerned different cases, such as the Sardinian tax on luxury and Greek port duties.