The battle against the no 5G municipalities in Italy is not over yet

Municipalities sued for ordinances against 5G antennas increase to 72. For some, the decision is postponed to 2022, with delays in the development of new networks

Protest against 5G in Turin (photo by Marco Bertorello / Afp via Getty Images) For the Iliad versus Poggiomarino cause we will meet again on 30 March 2022 . The Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Campania updated to next spring the appeal that the French telephone company brought against the Municipality on the slopes of Vesuvius due to the ban on installing 5G antennas. An ordinance dated 30 July 2019, signed by former mayor Leo Annunziata, secretary of the Democratic Party of Campania and believed to be very loyal by the President of the Region Vincenzo De Luca, raised the barricades against the fifth generation of mobile communications. On September 15, the TAR suspended the anti-5G acts, imposed on the city hall 500 euros in legal fees, but to get to the point it will be necessary to wait for the hearing in six months.

The battle against 5G municipalities is far from over. Although the Simplifications decree, launched in July 2020, attempted to cleanly cut the mayors' stop orders that were popping up like mushrooms, in the wake of an unfounded correlation between 5G and Covid-19, a legacy of over 400 remains. prohibitions, surveyed by Wired over time. There are two ways: either the mayor takes a step back or we switch to stamped papers.

Result? Analyzing the causes related to the TARs, in September 2021 there are 72 municipalities cited for initiatives against 5G (in the case of Genoa, Quarto and Perugia by local committees). This is an increase compared to the last census in April, when the meter was at 60, a sign that the guillotine of the Simplifications decree alone has not cut off the opposition to fifth generation mobile networks, inducing the mayors to withdraw their measures. According to the latest data from Asstel, the association of categories of the telecommunications sector, in the last month only one municipality has turned around: Spresiano, in the province of Treviso.

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The consequences of the stop

The largest number of municipalities mentioned in the TAR are in Veneto. The region, on the other hand, also had the highest concentration of no 5G ordinances. Followed by Sicily, Campania, Calabria and Puglia. In general, Asstel detects flat calm on the side of the frond opposed to the new mobile networks. The protests of the committees also stopped.

There remains, however, the legacy of a season of run-up to propaganda against 5G which in the space of a year, between the summer of 2019 and that of 2020 and with a peak in the months of the hardest lockdown , has induced hundreds of municipalities to cross the new antennas on the basis of a collage of unscientific theses and artfully manipulated official documents. A legacy that now has to be unraveled in court. With lawsuits postponed to a later date, legal fees often borne by municipalities (therefore ultimately by citizens) and blocked construction sites.



Regions 5G cases

Infogram The first section of the TAR of Lecce has scheduled the hearing on the appeal of Wind Tre against the stop of the Municipality of Aradeo to 9 March 2022 . In Diamante, in the province of Cosenza, each of the 5,052 inhabitants will have to pay 1.7 euros to cover the 8,653 euros of legal fees that the Municipality is responsible for reimbursing to Wind and Telecom. Against the stop of Sellia Marina, near Catanzaro, Wind has even promoted an urgent appeal to the President of the Republic. An instance that has now ended up on the benches of the Council of State, which has consulted the Ministry of Economic Development. In turn, the dicastery will have to send the administrative judges a dossier necessary to definitively settle the question, despite the fact that a suspension has already been issued. And to say that the regional agency for environmental protection of Calabria (Arpacal) had turned on the green light for the installation of the systems in 2020.

The Arpa are called by the same municipalities to determine whether the project of a The antenna complies with electromagnetic pollution limits when a telecommunications company requests to build one. Since 2019, as Wired has shown, over 5,000 applications for 5G antennas throughout Italy have been given the green light by the Arpa. And since some agencies did not respond to our requests for public access, the figure is by default.

Europe in trouble

The delay caused by the appeals is added to that caused by the pandemic. Although Italy was the first country in Europe to assign all frequencies for 5G (some of which are now occupied by televisions), it also committed the switch off of broadcasters from the 700 megahertz band to July 2022, effectively postponing all 'next year the possibility of activating the spectrum most coveted by the telephone companies. This slowdown has a cost: up to 4.3 billion euros lost, according to the calculations of the consulting firm Ernst & Young. Across Europe, 5G is lagging behind and fake news, data from the European association of telephone companies Etno, have provoked 288 attacks on antennas.

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan bets on 5G and 6.7 billion ultra-broadband networks, but the ground also needs to be leveled. It will take months. On 2 December Wind Tre reviews the Municipality of Syracuse in court, on 16 Iliad faces the Sicilian town of Leonforte. And with dozens of no 5G ordinances still in place, albeit invalidated, other appeals are around the corner.


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Topics

5G Broadband Europe Italy National recovery and resilience plan - Pnrr Telephony telecommunications policy globalData.fldTopic = "5G, Broadband, Europe, Italy, National recovery and resilience plan - Pnrr, Politics, telecommunications, telephony"

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