Strait Bridge, yes to cost update. Salvini: 'Building sites during the summer'

Yes to the updating of the Strait Bridge costs, no to the 'promotion' of the Società Stretto di Messina to qualified contracting station. This is one of the many compromises reached in the talks between Palazzo Chigi, Quirinale and Mef on the Infrastructure decree approved after a complicated gestation in the Cdm on Monday 19 May. There is still no definitive text, but according to a draft circulating yesterday after the end of the ministers' meeting - a meeting that also reserved a heated clash in the majority on the third mandate - what had already been circulating in recent days has been confirmed: the Società Stretto di Messina will not be promoted ex lege to a qualified contracting station "but we will turn to a third contracting station, the first one that comes to mind is Anas," as Stretto di Messina Spa CEO Pietro Ciucci explained.

Everything else in the regulation survives, starting with the updating of costs compared to those contained in the 2012 Nadef before the project was cancelled with a stroke of the pen by the Monti government grappling with the emergency of public accounts in deep red. The update therefore seals the 8.5 billion euro increase envisaged in 2012 against the 13.5 billion euro put down in black and white in the last manoeuvre, also addressing the services connected to the realisation of the work: an increase that must remain, says the rule, within the limits of the EU rules that establish a ceiling of no more than 50 per cent of the initial value of the work, the one put out to tender.

To complete the jigsaw puzzle of the procedures, one last but fundamental piece is missing: the finalisation of the environmental authorisations with Via and Vinca awaiting the final go-ahead. Then the CIPESS is scheduled to meet at the end of June to stamp the start of the work and finally the construction sites, or rather, the pre-construction work, as announced on Monday 19 May by Minister Salvini and CEO Ciucci at a joint press conference attended by Undersecretary Alessandro Morelli, the CIPESS coordinator. The Strait Bridge, the cross and delight of many successive governments that have pushed or scuttled the hypothesis of a link between Calabria and Sicily, is starting to warm up its engines, suggests its main sponsor, Deputy Prime Minister Salvini. At the end of a meeting on the legality of future construction sites, the holder of the Porta Pia ministry announced triumphantly that after many announcements, this time it will start. 'The summer of 2025, if we are not to say good but lucky and constant, is that of the works,' he said with satisfaction. We will have the workers at work for the pre-construction".

Once the qualification of Stretto di Messina Spa as a contracting station has faded, the ball will pass into the hands of the parent company. "On the contracting body, we will turn to a third station, the first one that comes to mind is Anas," said CEO Ciucci, who also stressed that the CIPESS examination will be of great importance since "together with the technical project and the findings of the environmental impact and the services conference, there will be the verification of the financial plan.

With a clampdown, however, on illegalities and possible mafia infiltration, as well as on construction site safety. It is Minister Piantedosi who presents it: 'We have proposed and agreed on an intervention that transfers, also in this case, the competence to the centralised structure for anti-mafia prevention at the Ministry of the Interior,' directed by Prefect Paolo Canaparo. The model is the one already developed for the Milan-Cortina games, which in turn takes its cue from the format used for the construction of a series of hospitals in Calabria. And which consists of the signing of a protocol with the contracting station and the general contractor that provides for the compulsory registration in the anti-mafia registry of companies by all economic operators involved in the design and implementation of the interventions, as specified by the Viminale structure. The protocol also prescribes: the strengthening of control and supervisory activities at construction sites with particular reference to work safety and the protection of workers' rights; the monitoring of the owners of the land to be expropriated; and the monitoring of the activities most exposed to Mafia influence and interference, such as the cement cycle and the disposal of excavation materials. The activity, underlines the Viminale structure, will start immediately, even before the laying of the first stone: the first step is the pre-laying of the site.