Special access to roads infrastructure and unconstitutional administrative practices

Acesso especial à infraestrutura rodoviária e práticas administrativas inconstitucionais

Abstract

Brazil suffers with infrastructure bottlenecks which burden the country’s production and impose physical obstacles to the complex constitutional mission of fostering social-economic development; this is not news. However, the hindrances are not exclusively of a material nature, deriving from insufficient construction work and public services. Such hindrances are also rooted in the design of certain normative policies in our country which have proven unable to connect with our Economic Constitution. Such state-of-affairs – which is disconnected from, and disrespects the constitutional guidelines in the sphere of infrastructure – presents itself in quite a singular manner when additional fees are charged for the use of roads for cargo transportation. Such anomalous fees charged in roads under concession, within the context of a peripheral and unstructured economy, characterize unconstitutional administrative practice (to the benefit of the concessionary).