Trisulti, twist: Lazio Regional Administrative Court rules in favor of ultra-right-wing school. MiBACT will appeal

There is a new twist in the long-standing issue of the Certosa di Trisulti, the thirteenth-century monastery in Collepardo (Frosinone, Italy) at the center of a dispute that pits the Ministry of Culture and Tourism against the Dignitatis Humanae Institute (DHI) foundation, the American ultra-right-wing school close to Steve Bannon. MiBACT, in fact, had granted use of the school to DHI in 2017, but after strong protests from locals theprocess for revocation had begun, set by the ministry on the detection of procedural and bureaucratic flaws. The MiBACT had thus found several irregularities, revoking the concession to DHI: a revocation, however, that was suspended by the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, which had upheld the suspension filed by DHI. MiBACT had decided to appeal to the Council of State, but the appeal had been rejected and Palazzo Spada had postponed everything to the March 11 hearing.

The ruling by the Latina section of the Lazio Regional Administrative Court was published yesterday. The administrative court analyzes three of the four critical issues raised by MiBACT: on the lack of legal personality, the Tar notes that this deficiency “cannot be considered radically preclusive to participation in the tender”; the lack of the requirement that DHI carry out activities for the protection, promotion, enhancement or knowledge of cultural and landscape heritage, according to the Tar is “belied by a reading of the original wording of the statute where it is clear that, among DHI’s tasks, the ’promotion of cultural heritage’ certainly fell within the scope of ’promotion of cultural heritage’, as required by the public notice”; on the lack of experience of at least five years in the field of collaboration for the protection and enhancement of cultural heritage (the DHI was in fact established on November 8, 2016), the court makes it known that the DHI “had actually been operating, as an unrecognized association, since 2008, originally through the creation of ’Parliamentary Working Groups on Human Dignity’ active within the ambit of several European Parliaments.”

The evaluations expressed by MiBACT are therefore “illegitimate” according to the Lazio Regional Administrative Court, “as they are based on a formalistic and restrictive reading of the reference discipline as well as of the rules established by the lex specialis.” The Regional Administrative Court then upheld DHI’s complaint that MiBACT had violated the eighteen-month deadline for adopting the ex officio cancellation measure. In fact, the ministry moved beyond that deadline (in October 2019, twenty-eight months after the publication of the ranking list for the allocation and notification to the DHI appointed concessionaire of the Certosa di Trisulti, and twenty months after the concession contract was signed, dating back to February 2018), but held that the time limit did not apply because, in MiBACT’s view, it was a contract that did not provide for economic benefits (and thus would be excluded from the case of contracts for which the eighteen-month limit applies), and DHI had submitted false documents. The two assumptions, according to the Tar, are “devoid of merit”: in the first case, because for the successful bidder the concession of a public asset in any case determines an economic advantage, and in the second because MiBACT would have merely “affirmed the original absence of certain requirements that the applicant had claimed to possess, without, however, clarifying in a punctual manner which ’false or mendacious’ declarations DHI would have made.”

The Lazio Regional Administrative Court therefore decided to uphold DHI’s claims, while also ordering MiBACT to pay the court costs. However, the ministry has already let it be known that it will appeal to the Council of State.

In the photo: the Charterhouse of Trisulti. Ph. Credit

Trisulti, twist: Lazio Regional Administrative Court rules in favor of ultra-right-wing school. MiBACT will appeal

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