Costa del Sol's 'chiringuito' beach bar and restaurant owners on warpath in face of EU's warning to Spain

Southern Spain and the Costa del Sol's much-loved 'chiringuito' beach bars and restaurants have had enough. They have decided to raise their voices in unison to defend the legality of their businesses and demand more speed from the Junta de Andalucía regional government as the authority in charge of handling the process of awarding and extending their business permits.

The threat to Spain from Brussels that current procedures for granting business permits to coastal trade do not comply with EU regulations, and also that central government has two months to respond to that accusation and adopt the necessary measures, has put the sector on the warpath.

The president of the trade association for beach businesses in Andalucía and also in charge of Malaga's Costa del Sol association, Manuel Villafaina, said that "we have been going through this process for ten years and on the Malaga province coast half of the beach bars are still waiting to be made fully legal. The sector has had enough." He warned that the Junta has been paralysed for two years and that the new sword of Damocles hanging over them from the European Commission could delay the end to these procedures for another decade if Brussels goes ahead with the threat to refer the matter to the Court of Justice of the European Union if Spain does not comply with the request.

Villafaina said that his association has already requested a meeting with the Secretary of State for Coasts (Costas) and that members are in contact with the regional Ministry of Sustainability, Environment and the Blue Economy to demand that they press home the point before the European Commission that the process being developed complies with all current EU regulations, as endorsed by legal reports already presented by experts in the field.

This trade association president is clearly ill at ease with this situation as he says "that there is no reason to justify the paralysis of the process," going on to cite several laws and regulations that his members have followed and which, he argues, are in line with EU regulations for granting such business concessions.

Villafaina warned that they do not rule out going to court in the new year to defend themselves and they may even call for measures to press for a resolution. Neither does he rule out taking other courses of action. "Since the governing authority was transferred in 2011 to the Junta de Andalucía for the management of the public domain and, in particular, for the granting of concessions, there has been no substantial and important regulatory change that could justify the current modification of the criteria for the granting of these concessions, nor the paralysis of the procedures by the Directorate-General for Sustainability and Climate Change."

Therefore, the association warned the Junta that "the regional Ministry for Sustainability, Environment and the Blue Economy, like any public authority, is obliged to issue an express resolution and notify it in all procedures for the granting of concessions in the Maritime Terrestrial Public Domain (article 21.1 LPAC). The current paralysis in these proceedings clearly violates the principle of legality, insofar as the duty of the governing bodies to resolve the procedures and notify the interested parties of their resolution would be unjustifiably breached."

The chiringuitos' owners consider that to date there is no judicial pronouncement that the current coastal regulations violate Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament of 12 December 2006, to which the European Commission's ultimatum refers. Villafaina pointed out that the 2014 reform, with the entry into force of the new general coastal regulation, matches the EU's principles of transparency provided for in the European Services Directive of 2006, guaranteeing compliance with the principles of publicity, objectivity, impartiality, transparency and competitive tendering in the procedures for granting concessions and authorisations in the public domain.

"In Andalucía the rules established in article 152 of the general coastal regulation (RGC) are followed, which includes a public information procedure, with a period of 20 working days on the day after the date of publication in the Official Gazette of the Province of Malaga," said Manuel Villafaina, who insists that "we cannot understand why the Junta de Andalucía has halted the proceedings. If it is for fear of the EC ruling, it is clear that the sector cannot wait another nine or ten years for the Court of Justice of the European Union to rule on this."