Spain’s Constitutional Court restricts territorial powers over security in ports

The Constitutional Court nullified a provision of the Valencian Generalitat on the management of ports in this autonomous community, noting that it invaded the competences of the State. The clause challenging the minimum safety distance of 1,000 meters in respect of land classified as residential, public, educational or sanitary and special tertiary to authorize the implementation of fuel oil product storage tanks of more than 5,000 cubic meters located inside the port installs for use. regions.

This preventive measure was adopted in response to repeated requests from neighborhood organizations in the city of Alicante, who demanded that certain facilities should not be located less than a thousand meters from residential buildings. In particular, these organizations considered it necessary to provide that the port of Alicante had large fuel tanks no less than a kilometer from residential areas. The claim stipulates that an autonomous law shall regulate the said removal and convert the removal measure into a general provision for all port facilities in the Valencian Community.

The measure was introduced as part of the Generalitat’s law on financial measures, administrative and financial management and organization, which in turn amended the land management law of the said autonomous community. What was to be avoided was the installation of oil product storage tanks of more than 5,000 cubic meters around houses located inside port areas.

The State Attorney’s Office held that the challenged concept, due to its neutral nature in terms of its scope of application—state-owned and regional-owned ports—interferes with the exercise of state powers with respect to the determination of service area. Is. With the Law of State Ports and Merchant Navy. Therefore, the thesis of the legal profession was that the new Valencian law violated the exclusive competence of the State in this matter, including the delimitation of port space and use in ports of common interest.

This sentence – for which the President of the Constitutional Court, Cândido Conde-Pampido, has been a rapist – underlines that the contestable principle does not apply, as the Generalitat Valenciana claims, a regulation that deals with industrial security. Affects the area, “given the clearly regional and urban planning of the forecasts involved”. The resolution argues that the jurisprudential conflicts arising in this case respond to the need to clarify the exclusive jurisdiction of the State in the matter of ports of common interest with the territorial jurisdiction of land use planning and urban planning, something that challenges The one who didn’t do the rule correctly. ,

The ruling – which has been approved unanimously – holds that the challenged section actually governs territorial interference in state decisions, including the preparation and approval of the aforementioned delimitation of spaces in ports of common interest. The court said the impugned law meant “proliferation of regional norms in a manner which should be held to be contrary to the constitutional order of distribution of powers, presuming an appeal of unconstitutionality.” However, the judgment specifies that the said presumption should be partial, given that the rule may also apply to ports under territorial ownership. As a result of all this, the disputed doctrine has been declared not only invalid, but also unconstitutional and inapplicable to the extent that state-owned ports infringe upon the powers of the State.