The Regional Administrative Court for the Lazio, Section Quinta Ter, with deliberate judgment on 13 October has decided a new controversy on the canons of the concessions demaniali marittime welcoming the recourse of the Italian Association Terminalisti Portuali (Assiterminal) along with 16 harbour companies concessions, including terminalisti of the ports of Genoa, La Spezia, Naples, Venice, Ravenna and Ancona.

The judgment confirms the orientation already expressed by the same Section in similar cases. With the sentence n. 13 of 2 January 2025 the TAR Lazio has canceled the decree of the general director for the Vigilance on the Authorities of Harbour System, the marine transport and for vie of water inside of the Ministry of Infrastructures and the Transports of 30 December 2022 that had updated the canons 2023 with an increase of 25,15% regarding 2022, using the index ISTAT of the prices to the production of industrial products. According to the TAR, however, Article 4 of Decree-Law No 400/1993 did not provide that index. The standard refers to the index of values for the wholesale market, and the ISTAT has clarified that the index used by the Ministry also includes products of the supply of electricity, gas and water, excluded from the first. In the meantime, the legislator had intervened with a qualified rule as an interpretation, clarifying that, in the absence of the wholesale index produced by the ISTAT, it is intended to be replaced by the index of prices to the production of industrial products. On the basis of this rule the dicastery had adopted decree No 164 of 18 September 2025 with which it updated the unitary measures of the canons for 2025 and canceled the previous decree of update already recorded to the Court of Auditors. Circular No 200 of 31 October 2025 then transmitted the decree with its tables. According to the applicants, those tables reproposed the increase of 25,15% already cancelled by the TAR.

In particular, the applicants complained of the infringement of judgment No 13/2025, the violation of the principle of legality and reserve of law, the misuse of power, the injury of legal certainty and legitimate expectations, and the prohibition of retroactivity. The Ministry replied that the decree was adopted in application of the new law, which would exclude the violation of the judgment, and claimed that decrees 2023 and 2024 had been brought down by the administrative judge and that the new rule for the future only year 2025.

With the last sentence, the TAR Lazio accepted the appeal by recalling its recent judgments, whose reasoning is divided into three passages. It is observed that the 2025 update, fixed to -0,65%, has been applied to the canon 2024, in turn calculated on the canon 2023 already increased of 25,15% with the decree cancelled. According to the judges, in this way the Ministry has in fact recovered an illegitimate parameter, making effective for the following years an increase contained in an act definitively canceled.

Moreover, the TAR notes that the norm of decree-law 73/2025 is not of authentic interpretation: the text may have induced the Ministry to consider it such, and therefore retroactive. But, recalling the constitutional jurisprudence, the TAR recalls that a rule is truly interpretative only if it expresses a meaning already attributable to the interpretation. Here, however, an index has been replaced with another one, not contained in the first nor fruit of its different reading, because the two indices are based on different calculation elements. The standard is therefore innovative and is only valid for the future.

Regarding the illegality of the retroactive part, the decision of the TAR explains that the decree is illegitimate in the part where, instead of introducing the new parameter only from the entry into force of the decree-law 73/2025, it extended its effects to the canons 2023 and 2024, thus inhering to the vice of the calculation base of the previous years. For the same reasons it is illegitimate also the circular no. 200/2025 with the tables attached, which replace those of the previous circular of 11 August 2025, concerning the ministerial decree no. 152/2025, then no more published and replaced by no. 164/2025.

The judgment therefore circumscribes the scope of the annulment, with the Ministry which remains free to apply the index of prices to the production of industrial products, but only for the future, while it cannot use it to re-determinate, directly or indirectly, the basis of calculation of the previous fees.

The list of the applicants in the sentence includes, in addition to Assiterminal, the societies Adriatic Container Terminal, Caronte & Tourist, Comet Maritime Terminals, HHLA Plt Italy, La Spezia Container Terminal, Magazzini Generali Silos Frigoriferi, Psa Genova Prà, Services Nuremberg, Steinweg-Gmt, Steinweg-Romani, Terminal Container Container Containers Port of Genoa, Terminal Naples, Terminals