Tender for new concession of A22 Brennero suspended

A new twist in the competition to assign the future fifty-year concession of the A22 Modena-Brennero motorway (Autobrennero). A decree from the MIT (Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport) has suspended the tender procedure until 30 November 2025 and in any case no later than, as stated in the text, the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union. The decree is signed by the director general of the ministry, Sergio Moschetti, and is dated Thursday 26 June 2025. The MIT tender notice, published on 31 December 2024, had already undergone a series of extensions in recent months. The last one, decided in May, had postponed the deadline for submitting expressions of interest by parties interested in the concession to 30 June 2025 (12:00 p.m.).

And a few days ago, the shareholders' meeting of Autostrada del Brennero, the company that presented a spontaneous proposal for project financing aimed at winning the tender for the new concession, had formalized the application for candidacy by explicitly declaring: "Now the goal is to win the tender."

The race, however, is currently suspended.

It is clear that everything revolves around the right of pre-emption that the Mit notice has provided for in favor of the promoter (i.e. Autostrada del Brennero). On this point, the notice states the following: if the promoter is not awarded the contract, it can exercise, within fifteen days of the communication of the award, the right of pre-emption and become the successful tenderer if it declares that it will undertake to fulfill the contractual obligations under the same conditions offered by the successful tenderer. The recognition of the right of pre-emption in favor of the promoter will be confirmed in the invitation letter only after the acquisition of the favorable opinion of the European Commission services.

Evidently, before proceeding with the tender, the MIT intends to verify whether the right of pre-emption in favor of Autobrennero is compatible or not with the rules of European law. Last May 22, the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry of the European Commission had sent the MIT a note in which it expressed "strong doubts about the compatibility of the provision, contained in the tender, of a right of pre-emption in favor of the promoter, selected on the basis of a previous phase characterized by very broad administrative discretion and which does not present any procedural guarantee of transparency, any protection of compliance with the principles of non-discrimination and equal treatment, nor any real opening to effective competition by other economic operators".