The mountain guide is born, "and cancels 7500 others"

The associations of environmental hiking guides are raising the alarm about the ongoing reform, which involves the creation of the figure of the "mountain hiking guide" complete with a professional order

BOLOGNA – A new professional figure that puts 7,500 at risk.It is the "Mountain hiking guide" provided for by the bill on the regulation of mountain professions, currently under examination by Parliament.And it is the one that "would unjustifiably put at risk the professional qualities and access to the activity of over 7,500 environmental hiking guides, which have been operating throughout the national territory for 30 years now“.The alarm was raised by the four professional associations most representative of environmental hiking guides at a national level (Aigae, Lagap, Assoguide, Agae) who, to discuss these issues, will meet in Rome on 28 February to define "a constructive counter-proposal ” for the ongoing reform.What is indigestible, attributing the professional profile of the environmental hiking guides, so-called Gae, to the mountain hiking guide" achieves "the establishment of a professional order" for the Gae, "in contrast with the European directives on free competition and access to the market, already implemented in Italy".

The Antitrust, add the four associations in a joint note, "has already clarified for some time that the requirement of registration in a professional college for the exercise of the profession of mountain guide (therefore even more so for hiking guides) it is an excessive and anti-competitive measure“.The concern, explains Luca Berchicci, president of Assoguide, "is that an inappropriate fragmentation of the profession is implemented and that, after many years of continuous training and experience in accompanying hikers, guides will have to start from scratch in order to access a qualification and to a professional college that has little relevance to their work".

Environmental hiking guides already today "accompany millions of people safely in every type of environment:sea, plain, hill, mountain, volcanoes…, without any territorial, geographical or altimetric limitation and professionally oversee the territories in which they work, contributing decisively to slowing down the depopulation of the mountains and smaller places". This profession has a consolidated profile and is today included among the professions "not organized into orders and colleges".Regulatory change would risk erasing this entire 'curriculum'.

Furthermore, “Our guides work in every type of environment, therefore they have a much broader field of action than that of the 'mountain' alone, and they offer slow hiking tourism experiences which are very far from the technical-sports ones that characterize mountaineering and current medium mountain guides.The bill therefore risks compromising the freedom to exercise the Gae profession, guaranteed by the European principles for the protection of competition, and damaging the professional lives of thousands of cultural excursion professionals.We have been asking for a law that regulates the profession for a long time but this is not the right path,” says Berchicchi.