Bridge over the Strait of Messina: does the hypothesis take shape again after the Monti government suspended its construction? Let's hear from the Minister of Transport, Maurizio Lupi: "The idea of a bridge over the Strait of Messina cannot, on a strategic and transport level, be considered archived". Words that come close to the controversies raised on the "discovery", in the meanderings of the Def, of a fund of more than one billion for the work, money justified by the ministry as sums entered under the item revocations and reuse, "not the allocation of resources to a work, but the historical indication of revoked and unused or usable resources”.
Minister Lupi puts his assessments in writing in the answer to a question presented to the Chamber. Meanwhile - he says - the construction of the bridge "would have the effect of increasing economic cohesion, of making internal accessibility of the territories of the South stable, a push to create that missing link of high-speed and frequent practicability of internal connections to territories of Sicily and Calabria".
In short, insists the minister, "the construction of the bridge over the strait offers an answer because it is identified, without too many ideologies, as an infrastructural invariant for the lasting development of the South, a unique opportunity for the emergence of urban underdevelopment in the South". What's more: Lupi does not fail to underline the "strategic value in the projection of the European continent and of Italy towards the entire Mediterranean basin", and warns because "very ambitious hypotheses are in the field in the Mediterranean area which threaten to completely marginalize not only the South, but the whole of Italy”.
So here are the reasons why "the idea of the bridge over the strait cannot be considered shelved". And as regards the technical project, "it could be revisited - Lupi insists - to overcome the lack of financial sustainability that has helped to strengthen the ideologically opposed positions". Of course, the minister is not hiding that there are laws approved by Parliament which have put the Stretto di Messina company into liquidation.
And these laws must be followed. But Lupi points out: “To innovate in this respect, an essential component is still missing so that a work like this can fully enter the government agenda: convinced and widespread sharing at all institutional levels. This component appears all the more necessary in such a delicate phase in the life of the country and so conditioned by public finance emergencies".
