On 4 November 2026 Italy's Ministry of the Environment published the decree, issued jointly with the Ministry of Culture, that approves the dredging of the Vittorio Emanuele III Canal, the access channel to the Maritime Station that would bring cruise ships back into Venice1. Of the four environmental impact assessments (EIA) opened on the strength of the 2021 decree that banned large ships from St Mark's Basin2, it is the second to close, after the one on the spoil island, approved a year ago3. In August I described these four procedures in a long article: this is the sequel, and it begins with the Technical Commission's opinion, on which the decree rests.
Where we left off
There are four files: the spoil island (procedure 13500), a repository for dredged mud to be built in the middle of the lagoon, larger than the whole of the Vatican City State; two berths and a passenger terminal at Porto Marghera (13980); the dredging and widening of the Malamocco-Marghera Canal (13981); the dredging of the Vittorio Emanuele (13664)4. Taken together, the four files describe a single system: the terminal cannot be reached without the dredging, the dredging cannot be done without the site for the mud, and the repository is sized to the volumes to be excavated. Each of the four procedures, however, assesses one piece.
That was the central point of my August article: every file refers you to another, and the cumulative impact of the four projects was nowhere on paper. Not by oversight: in its opinion on the spoil island the Technical Commission wrote that the cumulative effects «shall be duly examined in each of the subsequent projects»5. The overall assessment had been deferred to the later procedures. Yet, according to the Court of Justice of the European Union, the analysis of cumulative effects is not optional, and it must precede the authorisation: it cannot be put right afterwards6.
There was also an oddity in the status of the two dredging projects. From 27 July at the latest, and still on 4 August, their records on the Ministry's portal read «Parere CTVIA-VAS emesso», Commission opinion issued, yet not a line of that opinion had been published; on 7 August the same records showed a supplementary examination instead7.
My article closed with four questions, and of the first three I wrote that a document could settle them: whether any act names the Vittorio Emanuele as part of the Commissioner's mandate; whether any document contains an assessment of the cumulative impact of the four projects considered as a single system; what traffic scenario, taking account of sea level rise and of the closures of MOSE (the mobile barriers that shut the lagoon off from the sea during high tides), justifies these excavations. The fourth, whether Venice needs more cruise passengers, no document can settle. The decree of 4 November and the opinion attached to it are the first documents to arrive since then, and they are best read with those questions in hand.
The decree and the opinions
The decree that closes EIA 13664 issues a favourable environmental compatibility ruling and a favourable appropriate assessment under the European Habitats Directive, with environmental conditions. It is signed by the director general for environmental assessments jointly with the Ministry of Culture, includes the landscape authorisation and is valid for five years1. Attached to it are the Technical Commission's opinion no. 211 of 14 September 2026, 323 pages long8, and the opinion of the Ministry of Culture, which is dated 13 October 2025, more than a year before the decree9, and therefore predates the additional documents the proponent filed between November 2025 and April 20268. The other two open procedures, the Malamocco-Marghera dredging and the terminal, are marked «In attesa concerto», that is, awaiting the joint signature of the Ministry of Culture, and for neither has an opinion been published7. The decree can be challenged before the regional administrative court (TAR) within sixty days, which for anyone not formally notified run from its publication on the portal1.
Opinions nobody could read
The dates, however, do not add up. The Commission's opinion is dated 14 September 2026 and was logged on the 17th. Yet the procedure's record had shown it as issued since at least 27 July, and that is what the Ministry's environmental assessment portal still showed publicly on 4 August: between six and seven weeks before the date the document bears. On 7 August the record showed a supplementary examination instead7.
The published text mentions no earlier version, nor that supplementary examination, and the documents do not say what happened between July and September. On 27 July I wrote to the official in charge of the procedure to ask where the document the record showed as issued could be consulted, or at least what its number, its date and the expected publication time were; on 4 August I repeated the request, extending it to the Malamocco-Marghera procedure. I never received a reply.
There is a second clue, and it lies in the decree. Summing up the opinion, the decree quotes its conclusion on the appropriate assessment: according to the Commission, «on the basis of the information obtained from the Proponent, it is possible to conclude that the project, provided that the environmental conditions set out below are complied with, will not cause significant effects on the Natura 2000 sites concerned»1. That sentence is not in the published opinion. There is a similar one, but it is more categorical: «it is concluded that the project, by virtue of the mitigation measures and of the environmental conditions set out below, does not cause significant effects», followed by the statement that the cumulative effects «have been analysed and assessed within the present procedure»8. A possibility («it is possible to conclude») has become a finding («it is concluded»); a forecast tied to compliance with the conditions («provided that», «will not cause») has become a present fact («by virtue of the measures», «does not cause»); and the sentence on cumulative effects is not in the decree's quotation. It may be a transcription error, or a quotation reworded by whoever drafted the decree. Or the decree was drafted from a version of the opinion other than the published one. Finding out what happened would take a request for access to the records: an application to the Ministry, for instance under Italy's law on access to environmental information (legislative decree 195/2005) or under its freedom of information rules, for the versions of the document and the steps of the examination between July and September.
Nobody could read it, which is not the same as saying it did not exist: I do not know whether in July a text existed and was later rewritten, or whether the record was wrong. Nor is it the only case. As we will see, among the places where the cumulative impact «has been assessed» the Commission also lists the procedures on the terminal and on the Malamocco-Marghera, for neither of which, as at 4 November, is there anything to read.
The impact assessed «elsewhere»
On the combined impact of the four projects (the cumulative impact, in the jargon of environmental assessment), the heart of my August article, the opinion says two things, in two different places. In its examination of cumulative effects the Commission finds that the two dredging projects together produce changes in flows and salinity «significantly greater» than those estimated for each project alone: the volumes passing through the Vittorio Emanuele would grow by about 20 to 30 per cent, compared with 15 to 20 per cent estimated for dredging that canal alone, with effects that «could aggravate the known phenomenon of marinisation of the lagoon». It concludes that «a dedicated monitoring plan» is needed8. Then, just before its ruling, it writes that the cumulative impacts, «including the Commissioner's projects ID_13500, 13664, 13980 and 13981, have been analysed and assessed jointly within the respective EIA procedures», that «the assessment is therefore complete and is not left to later stages», and that the required monitoring has «no assessment function, but one of control and verification»8.
«Assessed jointly»? Assessed where? Even in its last few lines the opinion cannot make up its mind: in the passage just quoted the assessment took place «within the respective EIA procedures», that is, in each of them; a few lines later, in the final ruling, the same cumulative effects «have been analysed and assessed within the present procedure»8, that is, in this one. And one of the procedures it lists closed a year ago, and says the opposite. In its opinion on the spoil island, procedure 13500, the same Commission wrote that the cumulative effects «shall be duly examined in each of the subsequent projects»5, and on the basis of that opinion the island was approved by decree on 18 November 20253: authorised, that is, with the examination of cumulative effects deferred to the later procedures. So it is not true that the cumulative impact was assessed jointly «within the respective EIA procedures»: the island's own procedure states in black and white that it had not been assessed there. These are two statements by the same Commission, a year apart, and they cannot both be true.
In its assessment of the project, for that matter, all the Commission writes about the Commissioner's projects is that «the possible cumulative effects have been analysed by the Proponent»8. And this very opinion, which declares the assessment complete and not left to later stages, defers part of it to procedure 13981: the morphological instability of the Malamocco-Marghera, with erosion rates «of the order of tens of centimetres along the banks»8. That procedure, as at 4 November, is far from concluded, and its opinion is not published. The same goes for 13980, the terminal, which the opinion lists among the procedures in which the cumulative impact was supposedly assessed: it is not concluded either, and its opinion is not published.
In my August article, among the four questions with which it closed, I asked whether any document contained an assessment of the cumulative impacts of the four projects considered as a single system. Now the Commission answers yes: the cumulative assessment has been carried out, and it is complete, and the wording used is the one the Court of Justice requires, assessment before authorisation and not after. For the island, however, the answer does not hold: if an assessment of the cumulative impact that includes it did take place, it was carried out in another procedure and after the authorisation, which is the opposite of that criterion6.
A law read halfway
On the Zero Option, the alternative of not building the project at all, the Commission adopts the proponent's position: the zero alternative «is not viable, since it would entail disapplying, and therefore breaching, what the legislature has laid down», and in support it cites decree-law 103/2021, interministerial decree 545/2021 and the special laws for Venice8. This has not always been its position. In May 2025, in its request for additional information, it was the Commission itself that asked the proponent to «examine the zero option further in the comparative analysis of alternatives, so as to be able to assess the environmental impact of the chosen design alternative against the current state». The proponent replied that the zero option had «already been ruled out by the Legislature», and in its opinion the Commission adopted the same wording8. The laws it cites are all national, and in the passage where it rules out the Zero Option the opinion never refers to the European EIA directive. Yet, as I pointed out in August in «Two laws, two weights» and in the first of the four questions, it is from that directive, transposed into Annex VII of Italy's environmental code, that the obligation to assess alternatives, and to describe how the environment would evolve without the project, derives10. And European law prevails over national law: a statute can decide that a project is to be built, but it cannot decide what is to be assessed and what is not.
It is also worth reading the law the opinion invokes in full. Article 2 of decree-law 103/2021 assigns the Commissioner three kinds of work: temporary berths in the Marghera area, the «maintenance of existing canals» and ancillary works for nautical access. No dredging project is named, and the Vittorio Emanuele does not appear. The same article opens with a proviso, «without prejudice to article 3 of decree-law no. 45 of 1 April 2021», that is, the provision that ordered an ideas competition for «berths outside the protected waters of the Venice lagoon»11. And, in the text as converted into law, it makes every one of those projects subject to a precise condition: they are to be carried out «subject to a prior environmental impact assessment, as provided by the legislation in force on the matter». In the first version of the decree the condition applied only to the maintenance of the canals; with the conversion law, law 125 of 2021, Parliament moved it to the top of the list, extended it to all of them and added the reference to the legislation in force2. The law from which the Commission and the proponent infer that the zero alternative cannot be assessed, in other words, itself refers back to the ordinary environmental impact assessment: the very procedure that requires the option of not building at all to be examined too. And it keeps alive the option of a port outside the lagoon.
What remains open
The opinions and decrees on the other two procedures, the terminal and the Malamocco-Marghera, are still to be published. And when those close, will there still be a procedure left to defer the combined impact to?
Sources
- «Dragaggio del canale di accesso alla Stazione marittima di Venezia. Decreto di compatibilità ambientale», directorial decree MASE-VA-DEC-2026-0000680 (ID_VIP 13664), registered on 3 November and published on the portal on 4 November 2026, Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security, Directorate General for Environmental Assessments, jointly with the Ministry of Culture. Signatures, landscape authorisation and duration on pp. 1 and 7 and in article 1, paragraphs 2 and 3; the quotation of the Commission's opinion on p. 4; the time limits for appeal in the closing formula. va.mite.gov.it ↩a↩b↩c↩d
- «Decreto-legge 20 luglio 2021, n. 103, Misure urgenti per la tutela delle vie d'acqua di interesse culturale e per la salvaguardia di Venezia», converted into law 125/2021, Gazzetta Ufficiale; for article 2, paragraph 1, the original and current texts on Normattiva. gazzettaufficiale.it · normattiva.it ↩a↩b
- «Decreto n. 694 del 18 novembre 2025», environmental compatibility judgment on file ID 13500, Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security together with the Ministry of Culture. va.mite.gov.it ↩a↩b
- «Portale delle Valutazioni Ambientali VAS-VIA», procedure records for files ID 13500, 13664, 13980 and 13981, Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security. 13500 · 13664 · 13980 · 13981 ↩
- «Parere n. 110 del 6 ottobre 2025», EIA examination of the project «Intervento per la messa a dimora di sedimenti lagunari lungo il Canale Malamocco» (ID_VIP 13500), Technical Commission for Environmental Impact Assessment (VIA and VAS). va.mite.gov.it ↩a↩b
- «Sentenza della Corte (Quarta Sezione) del 24 novembre 2011, Commissione europea contro Regno di Spagna», case C-404/09, ECLI:EU:C:2011:768, Court of Justice of the European Union. Cumulative effects at paragraphs 77-80; assessment prior to authorisation, which a later report «cannot remedy», at paragraph 83. eur-lex.europa.eu ↩a↩b
- «Stato delle procedure e cronologia dei procedimenti ID 13500, 13664, 13980 e 13981», records consulted on 27 and 31 July, 4 and 7 August and 4 November 2026, VAS-VIA environmental assessment portal. On the first three occasions the status of procedures 13664 and 13981 was «Parere CTVIA-VAS emesso», opinion issued, and neither file contained a document folder for the opinion or for the decision; on 7 August 2026 both read «Supplemento istruttoria tecnica CTVIA», supplementary technical examination. On 4 November 2026 procedure 13664 reads «Conclusa», concluded, with the decree and the opinion published, while 13980 and 13981 read «In attesa concerto», awaiting the Ministry of Culture's joint signature, with no opinion published. The records as at 7 August 2026 are archived on the Internet Archive; neither the Internet Archive nor archive.today holds any copy earlier than that date. va.mite.gov.it · archived copy, 13664 · archived copy, 13981 ↩a↩b↩c
- «Parere n. 211 del 14 settembre 2026», EIA examination of the project «Dragaggio del canale di accesso alla Stazione marittima di Venezia» (ID_VIP 13664), logged on 17 September 2026, Technical Commission for Environmental Impact Assessment (VIA and VAS). Quotations are from pp. 4-5 (voluntary additional documents of 7 November 2025, 4 March and 7-9 April 2026), 10 (request for additional information of 27 May 2025), 44-45 (alternatives), 75-76 (cumulative effects), 289 (assessment of the project), 305 (conclusions) and 306 (ruling). va.mite.gov.it ↩a↩b↩c↩d↩e↩f↩g↩h↩i↩j
- «[ID: 13664] Porto di Venezia. Dragaggio del Canale di accesso alla Stazione Marittima. Parere tecnico», note no. 37155 of 13 October 2025, logged by the Ministry of the Environment on 14 October 2025, Ministry of Culture, Directorate General for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape. va.mite.gov.it ↩
- «D.Lgs. 3 aprile 2006, n. 152, Norme in materia ambientale», Part Two and Annex VII (as replaced by art. 22 of legislative decree 104/2017), Normattiva. normattiva.it ↩
- «Decreto-legge 1 aprile 2021, n. 45, Misure urgenti in materia di trasporti e per la disciplina del traffico crocieristico e del trasporto marittimo delle merci nella laguna di Venezia», Gazzetta Ufficiale n. 79 del 1 aprile 2021. gazzettaufficiale.it ↩