A Bridge too Far?
The return of the Messina Bridge Project means business as usual.
You may have missed this important piece of news. The Italian government has given the go ahead for the construction of the bridge over the Straits of Messina. But here is a caveat. It is not news and it is not important, except for the wrong reasons.
The Messina Bridge project has been talked about for decades, if not millennia, if you consider that the Romans first had the idea of building a pontoon bridge across the straits of Messina. The straits are not particularly wide, so it has always tempted people; but the straits are dangerous, thanks to the fault line that lies beneath them, the tendency to earthquakes in the region, and the swift flowing current. Don’t forget that the straits are home to Scylla and Charybdis (there is a nice fountain in Messina commemorating these mythical creatures), and Aeneas and his men went to Italy the long way round rather than risk the straits.
The other thing about the bridge project, which would be fantastically expensive, as much as 3.9 billion euro, and we know how these things tend to overrun, is that it is of doubtful utility, and there are other infrastructure projects that might make more sense, such as improving Sicily’s roads and making access to the ferry terminals on either side of the straits easier. The straits are busy, but not perhaps busy enough to justify the huge expense of a bridge.
The chequered history of the project, which has been inaugurated and cancelled at least twice before now, and has been the subject of endless research and surveys, all of which has cost a fortune without a single bucket of concrete being poured, tells you something about the Italian state and the way it functions in the south. The bridge is hailed as a huge job creation scheme: it entails not only building the bridge, which would be the longest in the world, but also upgrading rail and road approaches to the bridge. This means huge contracts for those lucky enough to get them. The competition will be fierce. Italian governments have always been high spending, but this is the greatest expense of them all, and the biggest prize for contractors.
Let us say you are a drug dealer, with a lucrative line in cocaine. Where do you keep all the cash you rake in? Fortunately for you, Catania is full of what we call ‘lock-ups’, what Italians call cantine, wine cellars, underground or semi-basement storerooms, accessible from the courtyards of the huge tenement blocks of the city, all full of junk no doubt, the ownership of which is hard to trace. These are the ideal hiding places for stashes of illegal unwashed cash. But that is only a temporary solution. How to wash the cash? The best way is through businesses that take cash, such as bars, trattorias and pizzerias. But really large sums require bigger solutions, and here construction comes in. You build a block of flats and you have invoices for all the materials you used, invoices that greatly exaggerate the cost of everything. (Remember in Italy, false accounting is not a crime.) You spent 20,000 euros on marble cladding supplied by your brother-in-law; the cladding is only a couple of millimetres thick, but by the time it falls off, who will care? You have effectively ‘washed’ 20,000 euro, now safe in your brother-in-law’s bank account.
Now multiply that by thousands, even millions, and in the Messina bridge you have the world’s largest washing machine for dirty cash, which will all come out smelling of roses. You may have a bridge at the end of it, or the bridge project may be abandoned, but think of the money you will have spent on all the feasibility studies, all the payments you will have made to your friends…. And think too of the ‘pump and dump’ potential of all the new companies you will have to set up to deal with the project.
When Giorgia Meloni came to power in Italy all the usual suspects were worried that this signalled a return to fascism. The more worrying thought is that perhaps it represents business as usual. The last person to revive the bridge project was Silvio Berlusconi. Why is Giorgia following in his footsteps?
This article is a bit of Italy bashing and mafia controls everything .
The project is currently estimated to cost €6 billion which fades into comparison with the sitting duck HS2 project in England estimated to now cost from £40 billion up to £100 billion should the full project ever materialise.
And is the UK mafia free ? What about Lord Mone PPE scandal for starters .
Back to the bridge . This is an instrumental infrastructure project which would link Sicily to mainland Italy . Connectivity is crucial for economic progress . Indeed Romano Prodi (socialist) also attempted to revive the project before Berlusconi , where work had actually started until his government collapsed .
Back to the HS2 nightmare . Are you aware that Italy already has TWO such fast speed trains up and down both coasts and from Milano to Venice - Frecciarossa and Italo which started operating some eight years ago . Nowhere near £40 billion was spent , mafia and all .
Also , this prejudice against Meloni is so unfounded and unfair . Have you heard of a certain Boris , and his antics ?
The very last thing Italy and Sicily need is this damned bridge. The country is sick with horrible problems such as its schools, hospitals, railway, roadways and plenty of other important things altogether neglected and actually harmed by the country's inept, corrupt rulers over the years. What the bridge is really needed for, the one and only thing, is to create public debt. This will plunder even more monies from Italy's tormented populace, monies that will go straight to international bankers. The bridge is, Alas, a dirty, wicked plot. By the way, the ferries that connect Sicily with Italy work very well and have done so for a long, long time. There is no need for a bridge. Except to create debt.