within which any business contributing to the creation of the tourism offer may be found7, the services provided by these businesses are not always directed at travellers. Although, from a “tourism-law” perspective, food and beverage services may now be regarded as autonomous with respect to transport and accommodation, thus considered primary services, pursuant to Article 3(1)(d) of Directive (EU) 2015/23028, especially in light of the current socio-economic relevance of highend dining and food and wine tourism, such services often continue to assume a supplementary role in relation to other so-called primary tourism services (for example, meals as ancillary to accommodation in hotel contracts, air transport, maritime transport, etc.)9. It is precisely in this supplementary role that some of these services achieve their greatest commercial development. In seeking a name for these legally unnamed agreements, we refer to them as contracts for the provision of food and beverage services, catering, and banqueting contracts. The traditional restaurant contract, whose legal regulation and classification, as we will analyse below, no longer raise significant doubts, has over time been joined by other contractual forms that, though originating elsewhere, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, have become widely adopted in Italy10. 7 The generic definition of tourism business was introduced in article 7 of law 135/2001, now repealed. 8 Directive (EU) 2015/2302 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 on package travel and linked travel arrangements. 9 The reference is to article 33 of the tourism code, Legislative Decree 23 May 2011, n. 79, which defines in the first paragraph, letter b) the integrative tourist services, or those tourist services that are strictly part of another tourist service from which they cannot be separated and which therefore do not contribute autonomously to the formation of a tourist package. 10 As proof of their diffusion, the words of the explanatory report of the proposed law n.5577 of 20 January 1999 by the Chamber of Deputies: “Catering and banqueting services are now widely known and practiced; they are meal supply contracts and also represent a new way of organizing celebrations for family or social events. These activities in particular consist of giving away, for a short time and with various forms of negotiation, houses, villas or other properties in order to provide lunches, with music and various entertainment for many guests. Usually the dishes arrive already prepared, but some dishes, such as fried or grilled foods, are cooked on site with barbecues or mobile kitchens. Equipment such as tables, chairs, umbrellas, etc. are also set up by the organization itself”. The legislator has then explicitly referred to catering on several occasions, we recall: Article 53, letter i ter, Law 6 November 2012, n. 190 on provisions for the prevention and repression of corruption and illegality in public administration, in which catering is listed among the activities at greatest risk of mafia infiltration; Legislative Decree 6 September 2005 n.206, Article 59, letter n) where catering services are cited; very widely in the emergency measures on Covid, always among the permitted activities: Prime Ministerial Decree of 11 March 2020, Art. 1, paragraph 2; Prime Ministerial Decree of 10 April 2020 Art. 1, paragraph 2; Prime Ministerial Decree of 17 May 2020 Art.1, paragraph 1, letter ee; Prime Ministerial Decree of 11 June 2020 Art. 1, letter ee); Prime Ministerial Decree of 7 August 202 Art.1, paragraph 6, letter ee; Prime Ministerial Decree of 13 October 202 Art.1, paragraph 6, letter ee; Prime Ministerial Decree of 18 October 2020 Art.1, paragraph 1, letter d) n.8; Prime Ministerial Decree of 14 October 2020, Art.1, paragraph 9, letter ee; Prime Ministerial Decree of 3 November 2020, Art.1, paragraph 9, letter gg, Art.2, paragraph 4, letter c, Art. 3, paragraph 4, letter e; Prime Ministerial Decree of 3 December 2020 Art.1, paragraph 10, letter gg, Art.2, paragraph 37 ITALY, FOOD, CONTRACTS
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