Salvini, who is infrastructure minister as well as leader of the far-right League party, has called the project “the most important public work in the world,” and said construction could start in November. If built, the 3.7-kilometer suspension bridge spanning the strait of Messina would be the longest of its kind, connecting the toe of the Italian peninsula to the northeastern tip of Sicily.
It would provide the island’s 4.8 million inhabitants, who have until now relied on ferries and planes for access to the outside world, with road and rail lines to the rest of Europe.
The firebrand politician is an unlikely champion for the project. His party was founded more than three decades ago in the hinterlands of Italy’s industrial north with a goal of breaking the region away from the rest of the country.
The League’s founder, Umberto Bossi, made stopping “Roma Ladrona” (thieving Rome) his rallying cry, pledging to put an end to the redistribution of northern tax revenue to the more impoverished south. He vocally opposed projects like the redevelopment of the former steelworks in Naples’ Bagnoli district, which he saw as a northern-funded giveaway likely to end up lining the pockets of southern politicians.
Now Salvini, who vocally opposed the bridge as recently as 2016, has become the foremost proponent of the massive public work, estimated to cost €13.5 billion. That would make it among the most expensive infrastructure projects ever built in Italy — and in the country’s southernmost regions to boot, known for the mafia and corruption.
“Everybody in Lombardy and in Veneto is angry at Matteo [Salvini] and his obsession with the bridge,” said one senior League official who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, referring to the League’s two heartland regions. “Some think it won’t happen, and some think it will. But almost everyone in the party in the north thinks it’s a waste of money.”