Tuscan companies to Minister Salvini: we need to speed up the infrastructure emergency

The future of the territories, and of the industry that enriches them, passes through efficient infrastructures and a modern logistics system, even more so in a delicate moment of economic slowdown like the present one. Tuscan industrialists repeated this to the Minister of Infrastructures and Transport Matteo Salvini, who arrived in Prato, at the headquarters of Confindustria Toscana nord, to attend a conference dedicated precisely to these issues. 'Interventions planned but not done become an emergency that can no longer be postponed,' stressed Fabia Romagnoli, president of Confindustria Toscana nord, thinking of the flood that destroyed factories and sheds in November 2023, 'and we believe we deserve a policy that decides and does.

The list of infrastructures to be built in Tuscany is long, starting from the new runway at Florence airport and the Darsena Europa to expand the port of Livorno, to the completion of the Livorno-Civitavecchia Tyrrhenian Corridor and the Florentine high-speed train station, which Salvini visited in the morning accompanied by Governor Eugenio Giani and Mayor Sara Funaro.

"The European Commission's competitiveness index places Tuscany 126th out of 234 European regions for infrastructure endowment," recalled Maurizio Bigazzi, president of Confindustria Toscana. 'The quality of infrastructure affects a company's production costs and its ability to compete in international markets,' he added. 'It is true that we are living in a phase of uncertainty, but it is precisely in this phase that strategic choices are defined, that we decide what we want to be as a territorial system and as a country.

Minister Salvini, who is grappling with hauliers who are calling for action to tackle the high diesel prices that are sending them out of business, said he was concerned about the country's resilience in the face of reckless increases in the prices of certain materials such as bitumen and the contraction of GDP, and lined up some upcoming infrastructure measures: the port reform ready to land in Parliament's chamber; the national airport plan that he pledged to approve by the summer to respond to the demand for goods and passenger traffic; the financing of some interventions on the Tyrrhenian Corridor now managed by Anas (from Livorno to Civitavecchia, two lanes were only built on 55 kilometres out of a total of 242), in particular an overpass in Capalbio to avoid the level crossing; the arrival of the Home Plan in the Council of Ministers to push the construction of housing for workers and families.

"The problem is not finding the money for the Tirrenica, it is keeping the country on its feet and not bringing the machine to a standstill," Salvini said. "Thinking of tackling an extraordinary scenario like this with ordinary rules," he was echoed by Federico Albini, president of the transport and logistics section of Confindustria Toscana Nord and creator of the conference on infrastructure, "means condemning the European production and logistics system to structural weakening. We urge you to support the country's entrepreneurial fabric,' he told the minister, 'and those who, like the transport system, support it.