The New Perspective After the Twin Rulings of the Council of State

The paper deals with the treatment – both legislative and judicial – of maritime concessions in Italy. It first analyses legal provisions regarding the term of duration of such concessions and then focuses on some recent sentences. The first of them could have made stronger the conflict between the Italian legal environment and EU one, as the legislative automatic prorogation of concessions was deemed to be legitimate. Luckily, further rulings stated that this legislative statute is not in line with EU law and so has to be non applied. The Council of State solved the question very recently: not only Italian legal discipline was sentenced not to be in line with the EU law, but also some guidelines were given to step out the impasse. Judicial review so proved out to be once again the key element to grant rule of law, even when relationships between different legal environments are concerned