Strait Bridge, first findings of the Court of Auditors: 'Defective documents, project to be integrated'

A measure 'of significant constitutive effectiveness' which, however, is presented 'more as a reconnaissance of the activities in the name of the various institutional players in the procedure than as a weighting of the findings'. In six dense pages, the Court of Auditors sent yesterday to Palazzo Chigi its remarks on the first examination of the papers laying the foundations for the Ponte sullo Stretto: in particular, on the Cipess resolution no. 41/2025, approved on 6 August. The bureaucratic machine is therefore now at a standstill, waiting for the CIPESS to resolve the doubts raised by the judges, a step that must be taken within 20 days, after which "the Section may decide on the status of the documents", without prejudice to - they emphasise - "the right of the administration to withdraw the measure in self-defence".

In the remarks sent to the Presidency of the Council (Dipe department), the accounting magistrates emphasise how "the duty of justification is not fully fulfilled, lacking (...) a precise assessment of the results of the investigation". Hence the request for "clarifications and informative elements" on a series of crucial passages. On the procedural level, the document notes "the peculiar modalities - sharing of link that refers to the institutional site of the company Stretto di Messina - with which some of the acts subject to control have been transmitted" and expresses perplexity on the choice to subordinate the effectiveness of the deliberation to the registration of an interministerial decree "already adopted since 1 August 2025 but sent to the control office only on 11 September 2025". .

No less relevant is the reference to the resolution of the Council of Ministers of 9 April 2025, which approved the Iropi report (Imperative Reasons of Overriding Public Interest), the act by which the government had declared the Bridge infrastructure to be of military interest, effectively opening the way to its inclusion among NATO expenditures. According to the Court of Auditors, that act, "by reason of its operative content and subjective referability", would appear to be among the acts subject to prior control of legitimacy under Law 20/1994. Clarifications were also requested 'as to the compatibility (...) with Article 6(3) and (4) of Directive 92/43/EEC and with the Vinca Guidelines'. A sensitive chapter that had already provoked an avalanche of appeals, and most recently, a letter from Brussels requesting clarification on the environmental impact of the construction of the link. And precisely for this reason it requires "updates in regard to the interlocution that seems to be underway, on this point, with the European Commission . The Court also stigmatises 'the lack of prior acquisition' of the opinion of NARS, the Nucleo di consulenza per l'attuazione delle linee guida sulla regolazione dei servizi pubblici.

On the technical project, then, the resolution approves the 2011 final project integrated with the 2024 designer's report, but the judges point out that "the many prescriptions and recommendations set out in CIPE resolution no. 66/2003 have not been fully complied with" and that "the opinion of the Superior Council of Public Works is not in the records". The requests on the economic framework are very dense. The Court pointed out the misalignment between the amount certified by Kpmg (10.48 billion lire) and that indicated by CIPESS (10.51 billion lire) and asked for clarifications on the increases in expenditure: from the 'safety costs', which rose from 97 million lire in the preliminary to over 206 million, to the 'compensatory works and measures', which rose to 267 million.

A large passage is dedicated to a crucial aspect of regulation, that of the role of Art, the transport regulation authority. The Court raises perplexities about the exclusion of the authority, "taking into account the broad scope of the provision in Article 37" of the measure, which intervenes on concessions, access to infrastructures, tariffs, conditions of use. An exclusion that therefore appears unjustified and will have to be rectified. In the judges' crosshairs are also the traffic estimates underlying the economic-financial plan. The document in fact asks for clarifications "regarding the evaluations carried out [...] on the methods used to select the company TPlan Consulting and the results of said study", used to define the tariff plan. The Committee also recalls the preliminary investigations that had already emerged at the preparatory meeting, pointing out the need for more detailed checks on the data underlying the project.