executive project in 2024, what’s in the Corriere.it decree

Green light to the bridge over the Strait. On March 16, the Council of Ministers approved the decree on the construction of the connection between Sicily and Calabria. The text also reads of the return of the Strait of Messina Spa, a company in which “Rfi, Anas, the Regions of Sicily and Calabria participate, as well as, to an extent of no less than 51%, the Ministry of the Economy, which exercises the rights of shareholder in agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructures, to which the latter is assigned the functions of direction, control, technical and operational supervision».

The Minister of Infrastructure Matteo Salvini was unbalanced on the implementation times, announcing the provision: «We plan to approve the executive project by 31 July 2024 and then start the works”.

The thirty-year duration of the concession

The text also establishes a thirty-year duration of the concession to the Stretto di Messina company, for which the revocation of the state of liquidation intervenes. The BoD will be “composed of five members, two of whom are designated by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in agreement with the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, who respectively hold the office of president and managing director, one member designated by the Region Calabria, one member designated by the Sicily Region and one member designated by Rfi Spa and Anas Spa. The Board of Statutory Auditors is made up of five members, of which three effective members and two substitutes».

The criticism of Legambiente and WWF

Against the Legambiente Bridge. Stefano Ciafani, national president of Legambiente says: «The real urgency to be addressed in a decree-law is the departure of those construction sites for the ecological transition necessary to allow citizens and goods to move in Calabria and Sicily as in a civilized and industrialized and to contribute to the fight against the climate crisis. This is not guaranteed today to either one or the other and it will certainly not be the Strait Bridge that will allow it. We need a drastic cure of the iron, an upgrading of the infrastructures for sustainable mobility, with electrified and double-track railway lines, traveled by modern, frequent and punctual trains, and not a cathedral in the evident “mobility desert” like the bridge over the strait of Messina”. The WWF also echoes which it defines as “bankruptcy to focus on a work with very high and unsustainable environmental, social and economic-financial costs, such as the bridge over the Strait of Messina”.