In 2023 when the Tav will finally come into operation connecting Italy to France and all of Europe I will be 70 years old. Someone, reading these few lines will say: so what?
Allora I was 40 when in 1993, as the Tokyo correspondent of the Sole 24 Ore, I started hearing about and writing about the Turin-Lyon. As if to say that this stretch of high speed, vital for hooking us up to Europe's rail transport, has become for me a refrain like that of "Peter and the Wolf". And the wolf, as we know, sooner or later arrives. I'm not sure though in the case of this great engineering feat.
I add, that of years ne I was 50 when I was a correspondent in Paris in 2003 and the Italian and French governments reaffirmed once again that the Tav was strategic for the two countries and the work would start shortly thereafter. But let's go in order. In the 90s, Umberto Agnelli was president of the Italy-Japan Business Group: an entrepreneur and solid Piedmontese who had convinced the great Japanese "keiretzu" to invest in the project.
The Japanese, sensing the deal, had given their full availability: financial, but also industrial, in the sense of offering their machinery for excavation and work. I understand that at a certain point everything was ready for the preliminaries of an agreement in principle, but what later, due to the usual political-bureaucratic shackles, everything ran aground and nothing more was done about it. Sin. So much so that Agnelli was deeply disappointed, as well as embarrassed with the great patrons of Japanese companies.
Turn the page, at the beginning of the 2000s, with Chirac president of France and the Prodi governments, first and Berlusconi, then, everything seemed to be done. At bilateral summits between the two countries, the Tav was always on the agenda. There were signatures, "black and white" memorandums of understanding, declarations, but... in the end everything remained a dead letter. Despite the support of the EU and the European contributions already allocated.
Subsequently, the economic crisis of recent years arrived, French enthusiasm waned, up to the declaration that the Tav, with its tunnel, was no longer considered strategic by Paris, also taking into account the fact that sectoral studies predicted a significant drop in rail traffic for the future on this section. Not to mention the violent disputes on the Italian side, which held back our governments until the advent of Monti.
Yesterday our Prime Minister convinced President Hollande to go ahead. This is obviously an important step, but certainly not a decisive one at the start of the work. Suffice it to say that Monti's mandate is winding down and the Turin-Lyon dossier will pass on the table of the next Italian prime minister. What will the next Prime Minister decide? Will he commit to the TAV or will he turn his back on the project again, pressed by protesters and by a cash-strapped Italian state budget? Skepticism is great.
Anyway, we'll see. I am here and as a convinced pro-European, I await with confidence. Almost as if the Turin-Lyon has become a personal affair.
