Tourism Law in Europe

intercommunal groupings of tourist municipalities and classified tourist stations (arts. L- 134-3 to 134-4). Thus, and by way of balance, we must note that the French model attends to an elementary principle of rationality, distinguishing between the legislative powers on tourism – coded in a single articulated text – and the executive powers, which are distributed among the different levels of Administration. II.3.2. Italy In matters of competence, Italy once again presents a similar problem to Spain and very different from France, in that the first two are organised as a composite state. In the case of Italy, decentralisation is operated with the regions. The Spanish case is repeated in Italy because tourism does not appear in the Italian Constitution of 1947, reserved for the Republic. Therefore, Article 117.4 stipulates that the regions have the legislative power of all matters not expressly reserved for State legislation. In this sense, tourism is, once again, a territorial competence, just like in Spain, belonging, in this case, to the regions 13 . However, do not forget that tourism is defined as a multidimensional matter 14 , to which other closely related matters such as the environment, culture and the provision of public services (i.e. drinking water, gas, electricity and waste collection) are tied. Therefore, the State has no obstacle to regulate these related matters that are not strictly part of tourism law. Consequently, the fact that tourism is considered a regional competence did not prevent the State from approving on 23 May 2011, the Legislative Decree no. 79, called: “Code of state regulations on tourism management and market”, in response to the delegation provided for in Law no. 246/2005. These are the rules of action of Directive 2008/122/EC, relating to timeshare contracts, contracts linked to products for long-term vacations and contracts for resale and exchange. This Code, known as the Tourism Code, establishes 13 CATERBI, Simona. “La nuova normativa in tema di turismo”, Rivista Giuffré , 2012, available in https://biliotecariviste.giuffre.it/Anteprima. 14 FERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ, C. Derecho administrativo del turismo , Marcial Pons, 8 th edition, Madrid, 2020, p. 17.