The European Parliament on Wednesday
approved the updated guidelines for the development of the
Trans-European Transport Network (Ten-T), which connects over
420 major cities in the EU, and included in the plan Italy's
ambitious project to build the world's longest suspension bridge
over the Messina Strait between Sicily and mainland Italy.
The agreement reached with the member states in December -
adopted in Strasbourg with 565 votes in favour, 37 against and
29 abstentions - includes, among other points, a reference to
the Strait of Messina, to add to the so-called
'Scandinavian-Mediterranean' corridor a "fixed link or bridge"
to connect Villa San Giovanni in Calabria to Messina, which
could then access European funding.
Work on the Messina Bridge will start this summer, Transport and
Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini said last Wednesday after
the environment ministry asked the contracting company to
explain 239 parts of the project.
Salvini has pushed strongly for the construction of what
will be the world's longest suspension bridge, a project mooted
by successive centre-right governments but never actually
started due to environmental, mafia infiltration and seismic
concerns and the significant cost.
The bridge currently has a price tag of some 14.6 billion euro
($16.14 billion), or about one percent of Italian GDP, and is
scheduled to come into use in the late 2030s.
"I'm going straight ahead and I'm counting on the Stretto di
Messina company to provide answers to all the observations made
by the other ministries within 30 days: the objective, I
reiterate, is to arrive at the start of work by the summer of
2024," said Salvini.
"I am counting on Italy to be a model of development and growth
and engineering".
The League leader has said in the past that the bridge will be
"the pride of all Italians" and will provide both a physical and
psychologically important connection with Sicily.
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