Italy’s grand plan to meet NATO target: A €13.5B bridge to Sicily

Faced with a daunting new NATO spending target, Italian politicians are proposing that a long-discussed €13.5 billion bridge to Sicily should be defined as military expenditure.

Rome is one of NATO’s lowest military spenders — only targeting 1.49 percent of gross domestic product on its military last year. That makes the new goal of 5 percent by 2035 seem out of reach.

And that’s where the bridge could help.

The government of Giorgia Meloni is keen to advance with the pharaonic scheme to span the Strait of Messina with what would be world’s longest suspension bridge — a project that has been the dream of the Romans, dictator Benito Mussolini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Both Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Infrastructure Minister Matteo Salvini, Meloni’s deputy prime ministers, are playing up the notion that the bridge has a strategic value to NATO rather than a purely economic role — a point that was also stressed in a government report in April.

A government official stressed no formal decision had been made on the classification of the bridge as a security project, but said further talks would likely be held soon to “see how feasible this feels.” The idea could be politically useful for Meloni as she struggles to convince a war-wary public of the need for major defense outlays at a time when Italy is already inching toward austerity.

There are some clear grounds on which Italy might be able to build a case for the bridge. Of the 5 percent of GDP NATO target, only 3.5 percent needs to be core defense spending, while 1.5 percent can be steered to broader strategic resilience such as infrastructure.

An Italian Treasury official also suggested that branding the bridge as a military project would help the government overcome some of the economic and technical barriers that have stopped it being built in the past.

For decades, efforts to build the bridge — with a estimated central span of 3.3 kilometers — have repeatedly run into problems of costs, the difficulties of operating in a seismic zone and the challenge of displacing people.

The new designation would “override bureaucratic obstacles, litigation with local authorities that could challenge the government in court claiming that the bridge will damage disproportionately their land,” the Treasury official said. It would also “facilitate raising money, especially in the next year, for the bridge.”

Imperative or ridiculous?

In April, the Italian government adopted a document declaring the bridge should be built for “imperative reasons of overriding public interest.”

In addition to its civilian use, “the bridge over the Strait of Messina also has strategic importance for national and international security, so much so that it will play a key role in defense and security, facilitating the movement of Italian armed forces and NATO allies,” the document added.

Whether NATO — and more importantly U.S. President Donald Trump, who loves a big building project — will buy into that logic is another matter. | Remko de Waal/EPA

Italy also requested that the project should be included in the EU’s financing plan for the mobility of military personnel, materiel and assets, as it “would fit perfectly into this strategy, providing key infrastructure for the transfer of NATO forces from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean,” the government report said.

The bridge “represents an advantage for military mobility, enabling the rapid transport of heavy vehicles, troops, and resources both by road and rail,” the government added.

Whether NATO — and more importantly U.S. President Donald Trump, who loves a big building project — will buy into that logic is another matter.

Officially, the Strait of Messina lies outside Italy’s only designated NATO military mobility corridor — which begins at ports in the Puglia region on the heel of the Italian boot, crosses the Adriatic to Albania, and continues on to North Macedonia and Bulgaria. It is also unclear whether the strait features in the EU’s own military mobility network, whose corridors, according to people familiar with the discussions, are expected to align with NATO’s routes.

The Americans aren’t showing their hand for now. When asked about the bridge at the NATO summit in The Hague in late June, U.S. aides chuckled, but offered no immediate response.

Berlusconi bridge

Foreign Minister Tajani is a vocal advocate of the bridge. “We will make Italians understand that security is a broader concept than just tanks,” he said in a recent interview with business daily Milano Finanza.

“To achieve this, we will focus on infrastructure that also has civilian uses, such as the bridge over the Strait [of Messina], which falls within the concept of defense given that Sicily is a NATO platform,” he added. 

Infrastructure Minister Salvini, Meloni’s other deputy, sees the bridge as something that could transform his far-right League party — originally the secessionist Northern League — into a successful nationwide political movement that also commits to a big project in the south.

“Of course,” he recently responded when asked by a reporter whether the bridge could help Italy reach its new NATO goal.“Infrastructure is also strategic from a security perspective in many ways, so if we invest more in security, some strategic infrastructure will also become part of this security plan.”

Salvini has been pressing for the process to speed up, according to the Treasury official and a lawmaker familiar with internal government dynamics.

“Matteo is pushing a lot to obtain some form of ‘approval’ of the project at technical and political level in order to show to the public opinion that something is moving,” the Treasury official said.

Opposition parties disagree with both the need to build the bridge and its classification as military spending.

Foreign Minister Tajani is a vocal advocate of the bridge. | Oliver Hoslet/EPA

“This is a mockery of the citizens and of the commitments made at NATO. I doubt that this bluff by the government will be accepted,” said Giuseppe Antoci, a member of the European Parliament from the left-populist 5Star Movement.

“The government should stop and avoid making an international fool of itself, which would cover Italy in ridicule,” he added.

Another argument against the project is that it would connect two of Italy’s poorest regions, neither of which has an efficient transport system. Many believe that investing in local streets and railways is more urgent.

“The population of Sicily and Calabria suffers from inadequate water infrastructure, snail-paced transport, potholed roads, and third-world hospitals. The bridge over the strait, therefore, cannot be a priority,” Antoci said.

But the governing coalition is determined to move forward. On Tuesday, Salvini said the project’s final authorization is expected in July.

In a somewhat inauspicious sign, Tajani has proposed naming the bridge after Berlusconi, a prime minister famed for his bunga bunga parties and interminable legal battles.