The off-road world has been in the eye of the storm a few days ago due to a decree published last December 1 in the Official Gazette – which became effective today – relating to
regulation of the rules on the protection of forest and forestry-pastoral resources. With this document, a rule that has already existed since 2018 has been tightened but not clarified – decree
legislative n. 34 of 3 April 2018 – which inhibited the forest road system for ordinary traffic, reserving mountain roads for tractors, trucks and operating machines. In the concept of traffic
Ordinary includes any object taken into consideration by the highway code, therefore not only motor vehicles such as cars, motorcycles or quads, but also bicycles.
However, the 2018 decree became effective “subject to municipal authorization”, triggering the usual gray areas of the Italian bureaucracy. What changes instead with this new decree
is the addition of the concept of “minimum criteria” for the preservation of these areas, identifying “the typologies and technical-constructive characteristics of the forest and forest-pastoral viability, of the
works related to forest management and hydraulic-forestry arrangement “always referring to the decree of 2018. Currently it is impossible to say what it means in practice, but the manufacturers’ association and the Italian Motorcycle Federation have defined it as a standard shortsighted and with possible profiles of unconstitutionality that creates serious economic damage to the two-wheeler sector.
“This is a short-sighted rule, which can potentially create serious economic damage to the market, to the entire supply chain, to recreational and sporting activities and to those related to hospitality and tourism. There are also possible profiles of unconstitutionality, because the balance of interests at stake and constitutional rights such as free movement, the right to free economic initiative and the right to carry out sporting and recreational activities is obviously lacking “jointly declared Confindustria ANCMA and the FMI, which also simultaneously activated an interview with the Government in order to obtain clarifications and a correction of the
provisions contained in the Decree.
Furthermore, the Federation recalled that this year the Italian riders have triumphed in the most important international off-road sporting event, the Six Days of Enduro hosted in the Oltrepò Pavese hills. All this without taking into account that in Italy the two-wheel industry generates a total value of over 7 billion euros and employs more than 100,000 employees in its supply chain, while the sporting activity of the sector totals over 117,000 members structured in 1760 Moto Clubs on the National territory.
