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For days the governments of some European countries have been negotiating to coordinate the closing and eventual opening of the ski resorts in their territory. It is a very sensitive issue for several reasons: both health – it is now established that one of the first and most serious outbreaks of European coronavirus occurred in the Ischgl ski resort, Austria – and economic, because a large part of the income in The alpine regions of the European countries revolve around the ski season, which lasts more or less from December to March.
The countries most involved are France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Slovenia and Switzerland. Each of them can decide independently whether or not to open the lifts, but all governments agree on the need to find a common solution to prevent one or more countries from competing unfairly and attracting skiers from half of Europe to their lifts.
Finding a compromise will not be easy, as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel also admitted, because the starting positions of the different governments are very different: Italy, France and Germany are oriented to keep the plants closed at least until the beginning of January. Slovenia is waiting for an indication and will honor the compromise to be negotiated. Switzerland is not part of the European Union and it is not clear how it will move. Austria says it is ready for a coordinated shutdown, as long as the European Union compensates appropriately: Austrian Finance Minister Gernot Blümel has already estimated that a three-week shutdown over the Christmas period will generate a loss of around 2.4 billion . euro (a slightly higher figure is also spoken in Italy).
It is not even clear what the European Commission will do: in an interview today in Corriere della SeraHealth Commissioner Stella Kyriakides evasively responded to a question about the ski lifts. In another passage, Kyriakides confirmed that the Commission will publish guidelines on the actions that every government should take during the Christmas season, but it is not clear if they will include recommendations on lifts.
It must also be said that the European Union does not have competence in this regard, and that it could decide to leave the matter in the hands of individual governments, since it affects a minority of the countries of the Union (in addition to one that is not part of it and the EU is not on good terms with lately: Switzerland).
Even within individual countries, however, different positions coexist. Two days ago the president of the province of Trento Maurizio Fugatti said that the reopening of the plants “would be possible”, if the infections continue to decrease as they have done in the last two weeks, and that we must “work to promote it.” Also Fugatti, like the Austrian government, maintains that in case of closure “it will be necessary to provide the consequent refreshments.” The regional governments of Lombardy and Piedmont also spoke out against the closure, while the president of the Veneto region, Luca Zaia, and that of the province of Bolzano, Arno Kompatscher, sided with the central government.
It will not be easy to reach an agreement, especially if Austria insists on seeking compensation from the European Union: the Austrian newspaper The standard points out that the funds could hardly come from the so-called Recovery Fund, which will favor investments in favor of digitization and sustainable development, and that other items of the European budget could be used: which, however, is already agreed and is currently blocked by a veto of Hungary and Poland that does not refer to the distribution of money.
If negotiations then fail and one or more countries decide to open the ski lifts, the others could decide to discourage their skiers by adding ski resorts abroad among the destinations at risk, forcing them to quarantine after returning. Ticino News for example, he warns that according to his data the option is already on the table: “Switzerland, together with Austria, could end up on the list of risk countries drawn up by the Italian government these days.”
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