The Parma Regional Administrative Court rejected the appeal of a slot hall against the provision of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia which, in 2020, ordered the suspension of the license in application of the distance meter.
The TAR deemed the management order legitimate, as it complied with the provisions relating to the application of minimum distances from sensitive places.
For the Administrative Court “regional resolution no. 831/2017 confirmed the extension of the ban to operating gaming and betting halls and mandated the Municipalities to carry out the "mapping" of "sensitive places", as well as proceed with their updating, both in accordance with art. 48, paragraph 5, of Regional Law no. 18/2016 (“Consolidated law for the promotion of legality and for the enhancement of responsible citizenship and economy”), as well as art. 6, paragraph 2-up to, of regional law n. 5 of 2013 (containing the ban on operation at a distance of less than 500 metres); the municipal deliberative acts of a reconnaissance nature, in the identification of sensitive places (modalities and mapping), have conformed the activities falling within the territory to the protection of the superior public interest pursued by the regional law (see TAR Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, Section II, n. 245 of 21 April 2023).
In the present case, therefore, in any case the mapping implementation acts nor the prerequisite regional ones are not contested, the complaint relating to the failure to identify the sensitive places on which to parameterize the burdened measure appears to be groundless, not only by virtue of the easy identification of the places found sensitive, but also in the absence of a concrete dispute on the distance consistency of the activity in question from the sensitive places themselves identified by the defendant Municipality".
