EIR Joins High-Level Initiative to Promote Messina Bridge

Dec. 18 (EIRNS )—EIR Strategic Alert co-editor Claudio Celani joined a large group of professors, engineers, economists, journalists and politicians who drafted a book aimed at unblocking government action in favor of infrastructural development of Southern Italy, centered around the indispensable connection between Sicily and the Italian mainland through the famous Messina Bridge. The e-book, entitled Will the Mezzogiorno Be Betrayed? was initiated by Schiller Institute friends Enzo Siviero and Giovanni Mollica and includes entries by Sicily regional President Nello Musumeci, Calabria regional President Roberto Occhiuto, Messina Mayor Cateno De Luca, plus 25 other authors, who develop several aspects of a plan for the development of the Mezzogiorno.

The starting point is that originally, funds the Italian government will borrow and receive as grants from the EU would be especially dedicated to fill the infrastructure gap between North and South. However, the intention, also recommended by the EU Commission, was not adhered to, as the decision not to include the Messina Bridge in the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan soon showed.

Thus, the authors warn the government that it is not too late to resume the original promise, arguing that if it does not do so, it will lose the historical opportunity to integrate Italy in the development of North-South, East-West connectivity.

Although Siviero and Mollica refer to the Belt and Road Initiative in their chapter, it is EIR’s Celani who dedicates his chapter entirely to the BRI. Celani recalls the memorandum of understanding signed on March 22, 2019, regretting that a government (two governments!) change and international pressures have left that memorandum unimplemented. The BRI is the largest infrastructure investment in history and it has no political color, either “communist” or “capitalist.” Southern Italy is the natural bridge between Europe and Africa-Asia in the BRI. As a matter of fact, it was Lyndon LaRouche who first developed the BRI  concept in 1990-91. The article is illustrated with an original EIR map of the Eurasian Land-Bridge and a current map of the Belt and Road Initiative.