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SicilyThe Italian government wants to resuscitate the Messina bridge
Connecting Sicily to the rest of Italy, Rome dreams of it. The government of Giorgia Meloni wants to reactivate the company Stretto di Messina, responsible for carrying out the project.
With a minimum width of 3.3 km, the Strait of Messina could be equipped with a bridge. Rome wants work to begin in two years.
REUTERS
The new Italian government, led by Giorgia Meloni, intends to resurrect the pharaonic construction site of the bridge over the Strait of Messina, linking Sicily to mainland Italy, which was buried in 2011 by the executive of Silvio Berlusconi. On the initiative of the Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, the Council of Ministers approved, on Monday evening, the reactivation of the company Stretto di Messina (Strait of Messina), responsible for carrying out the project and put into liquidation in 2013.
“It is not a Sicilian or Calabrian infrastructure”, but this bridge “can and must be a jewel on a planetary level”, declared Matteo Salvini, Wednesday, during an online conference devoted to this subject. “Technically, it won’t be easy, the economic and financial plan must be reviewed and the project updated,” he said, estimating that work could start in two years. Among the options on the table, the League leader cited resuming the old project or launching a new tender.
In October 2011, the Italian Parliament voted on a motion putting an end to public funding of 1.77 billion euros for the controversial construction site of the bridge. The Berlusconi government, grappling with a financial crisis which forced it into draconian austerity measures, had agreed to this vote.
Rome wants European co-funding
This bridge, with an expected cost of six billion euros, was to be almost 3.7 km long and 64 meters above the sea. In October 2011, the European Commission ruled out this bridge works considered priorities and strategic for the development of transport in the EU.
On Thursday, Matteo Salvini explained that he will still ask for European co-financing at the next meeting, on December 5, in Brussels, of EU transport ministers. “These works” concerning the bridge “are of interest to all of Europe and I will ask that this strategic infrastructure, this strategic continental corridor, have European co-financing”, he declared.
Environmental impact criticized
The idea of connecting Sicily to the rest of the continent is decades old, but it struggled to find a viable solution. The bridge project was revived by the previous Berlusconi government, elected in 2001, then canceled by the center-left government of Romano Prodi in 2006.
The Italian construction group Webuild (formerly Salini Impregilo) had won the call for tenders in 2005 to be the prime contractor for the site, with an estimate of 3.9 billion euros, before seeing the buried project. In October of the same year, the European Commission had initiated proceedings against Italy, accusing it in particular of not having carried out an “environmental impact analysis” of the construction of the bridge for the 300 species of birds. wildlife present in the strait.
Geologists had also warned of the vulnerability of the bridge to the significant seismic activity in this region.
(AFP)