"As long as we are in the government, the Tav will never take place": these are unequivocal words pronounced yesterday by the deputy premier and head of the Five Stars, Luigi Di Maio who seem to place a tombstone on the Tav and above all on the Turin-Lyon railway line. But will it really end like this? And the other deputy prime minister, the Northern League Matteo Salvini who only a few days ago visited the Tav construction sites in Val di Susa, will he surrender without a fight?
It's hard to say how it will end and whether the Tav or the Conte government will really go to the archives but what is certain is that we have really reached the final surrender.
It has been some time since the Five Stars, after having suffered repeated setbacks by a devastating Salvini who is growing in the polls at their expense, have been meditating on overturning the table and the Tav, in spite of the real interests of the country and the costs already incurred or to be supported in case of renunciation, it seems the right occasion. "The question is closed" thunders Di Maio, who adds: “The worst lobbies in this country want to start doing” but the Five Stars won't allow it. And the grillino minister of Infrastructure Toninelli supports him by anticipating that the mysterious cost-benefit analysis made by a ministerial commission he set up and dominated by the No Tavs has given "strongly negative" results on the continuation of the work.
But Salvini is not there, even if he softens the tone: “An agreement will be found on the Tav as always, and it will be done. There is already a hypothesis of understanding. Italians want to travel”. But he answers him the grillino Alessandro Di Battista with a hard face and with vulgar words: "If the League intends to go ahead by continuing to dig a useless hole that costs 20 billion and which does not serve the citizens, it should go back to Berlusconi and stop breaking ic ...."
In short, rags are flying on the Tav if it is true that Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte also had to intervene yesterday evening to try to cool tensions by appealing to the cost-benefit analysis and the revision of the work indicated by the government contract. But time is running out and it will be necessary to decide before February 19, when Telt board of directors will meet which must build the international tunnel for the Turin-Lyon. The showdown this time seems really close.
