The pipeline project promoted by TAP is back in the spotlight of the most important national media: why? The Council of State has published the sentence relating to the appeals brought by the Puglia Region and the Municipality of Melendugno, essentially on the release of the Single Authorization of 20 May 2015 and on the non-application of the Seveso directive: unfounded, and therefore rejected.
We do not doubt that the final word has not yet arrived on the project which has so far surpassed all the judicial initiatives, in the various offices, promoted by the Municipality and the Region. Unfortunately, I fear we are faced with the umpteenth case in which an infrastructural project to be implemented in Italy generates more turnover for the various lawyers involved than for the engineering firms.
What the absolute instrumentality and speciousness of these actions is astonishing and the way they are conveyed to the public: What logic, if not politics, does President Emiliano's almost two-year battle on TAP respond to, in particular on its landing place? Does it have a legal basis, or rather a congressional one? What methods and tools did the Region have to protect the interests of the territory? Before taking legal action, it would have been helpful to consider the following:
The long process of via Nazionale involves the participation of an official of the Region: how many times has he done it? Zero.
During the services conference, the Region expressed a negative opinion, not taking the space to indicate the necessary changes to the project to overcome this disagreement. During the articulated conciliation procedure conducted by the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the Region did not bring any alternative design solutions to the table. There was a table conducted by the then president Vendola with some Mayors of Salento, but it did not lead to any proposal that could be delivered to the conciliation table.
If alea iacta est, how is it possible a few years later to still say that the people of Salento don't even have the right to decide where the pipeline should pass from? How long and uncertain do you think an authorization process can be? Who bears the costs of justice, so much solicited? How to evaluate the credibility of a system of rules and collaterally the country's attractiveness in the eyes of foreign investors?
Much could be said about the initiatives conducted by the Municipality of Melendugno to block the activities of preliminary investigations at the start of the authorization procedures, not validated by the administrative justice.
EU Commissioner Maros Sefcovic will soon arrive in Puglia, worried about the delays on the project roadmap for the Italian 8 km alone, compared to the much more articulated and complex Greek and Albanian route: who knows if someone will represent him the mantra of cut olive trees (instead of telling them temporarily explanted, as happens for a few tens of thousands of olive trees every year in the province of Lecce alone)?
