The clash between Italy and France over the control of the shipyards of Saint Nazaire heats up. Through Ministers Pier Carlo Padoan and Carlo Calenda, the Italian Government curtly returned to the sender the French Government's request to review the corporate structure of the Breton shipyards despite Fincantieri having taken note of it in an international auction promoted by the Seoul court 66,7% and has every right to manage them personally, as agreed at the time with President Hollande.
The no to Paris's requests - explained the two Italian ministers - is dictated by reasons of merit but also of dignity and national pride.
Now the French government, which expresses the guidelines of the new president Emmanuel Macron, demands that control of the construction site be fifty-fifty and, faced with the Italian opposition, threatens to reach the extreme consequences and that is the nationalization of the Saint Nazaire plant and the ousting of Fincantieri, which lost just under 9% on the Stock Exchange yesterday.
The next few hours will be decisive for the naval battle between Rome and Paris and perhaps already today the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, will announce his Government's intention to exercise the right of first refusal on the share of Saint Nazaire in the hands of Fincantieri.
The interests at stake, which concern not only the construction of cruise ships but also new generation military ones, are enormous but it would certainly be paradoxical if President Macron, who swept the recent presidential elections on the basis of a reformist and pro-European platform, disavow the market solution that led to the conquest of Saint Nazaire by a European company such as Fincantieri and even went so far as to nationalize the shipyards with an impressive leap backwards.
