“The Bridge is not a whim, the South is not a ballast”, Musumeci insists with Carfagna

“The Bridge is not a whim, we are not a ballast”. This was stated by the president of the Region Nello Musumeci during the conference on Southern issues organized by the Minister for the South, Mara Carfagna.

“If we want to recover the South, Rome and Brussels must be convinced that the issue is national and European – he added -. A Table on the future of the South is urgently needed, and we are ready to be part of it to urgently address these issues, including the destination of the Recovery Plan funds of which we have no news because it seems to have been decided in the Roman palaces. And this is certainly not the solution ».

«Let’s stop – added the Sicilian Governor – with the cliché of the problem of legality in the South. It was fine ten or twenty years ago. Today the crime factor, which exists and is present, can no longer be considered a diseconomy if compared to the fearful lack of infrastructures and the bureaucratic procedures that from Brussels and Rome do not seem conceived to accelerate public spending but almost to curb it. . How can we talk about high speed if we need to stop fast trains in Reggio Calabria, get passengers off and get them on a ferry? There is still discussion about “ponte yes or ponte no”: is the bridge a whim for the Sicilians and the Calabrians? Or, instead, an all too obvious necessity? In other parts of the world – continued Musumeci – a bridge can be built in two years and here, instead, it has been talked about for a hundred. To create a public work in Sicily it takes 5.2 years, when one or two would be enough. Therefore we need a de-bureaucratization of the procedures: the Morandi Bridge in Genoa becomes a method to be exported to the Southern Regions. Give us the tools, tell us what the Euro-Mediterranean perspective of Sicily is, or if we should only continue to greet the ships passing by Suez without stopping in our ports. It is not possible – concluded the Governor – that Sicilians have to pay 600 or 700 euros for the plane ticket to go to Milan. The South does not want, and can no longer, be considered a ballast ».