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The moods of the members on the eve of the decisive passage say that the assembly will be a formality to be completed in ten minutes. It matters little if someone inside Atlantia disagrees: the Benettons, together with at least two other shareholders, have the majority of Autostrade per l’Italia and have decided that the time has come to sell it. The yes of the assembly will close that break with the state that opened almost three years ago, following the collapse of the Morandi bridge. Everyone will need a little bit: the Ponzano Veneto family who will not only try to free themselves from the etiquette of ruthless entrepreneurs, but will also be able to use the collected money for new businesses; to politics that will claim courage and skill for having brought the highways back under “public” control.
The story, however, is not closed: the great issue that generated it – neglect in maintenance – is not resolved with the change of ownership.
Let’s start from the queue to understand why the political class, as a whole, has missed an opportunity and that is to leave the rhetoric of the tragedy that must never be repeated. The 5 stars will celebrate the expulsion of the Benettons, they will abuse the term nationalization to prove themselves consistent with the slogan of the “return of the highways in the hands of the Italians”. It does not matter if when we passed from the celebrations to the facts, that is to the negotiation, the pure nationalization turned into the sale to a consortium led by Cassa Depositi e Prestiti, but with Blackstone and Macquarie inside, private subjects, corsair funds. And it doesn’t matter if the taboo of “never a euro at Benettons” has also been broken. In turn, the Democratic Party will be able to say that it has built the agreement with the Benettons, rejecting the initial grill logic, that of revoking the concession.
What has been missing in these three years – and here the responsibility extends to all parties – has been a detailed and timely work on the convention.
The Genoa tragedy was supposed to be an opportunity to rewrite the relationship between the State (the grantor) and Autostrade (the concessionaire). This time has been exploited only in part, among other things without even generating a public debate on the roles to be rewritten, on how to ascertain responsibilities in the future, but above all on how to rebalance a relationship that has gone on for decades by inertia, but then discover, after the tragedy, that often the head did not know what the arm was doing and vice versa. Perhaps there was nothing else to expect if the only debate was on how to punish the Benettons. It began on August 15, 2018, the day after the catastrophe, with that “we cannot wait for the times of justice” pronounced by the people’s lawyer Giuseppe Conte.
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Now it is evident that the responsibilities lie with Autostrade: it will be the trial underway in Genoa that will establish guilty, penalties and compensation. But it is equally evident that the state, in the form of the government, is also called to a change of pace. Politics deserves credit for having taken a step forward, but not yet sufficient. We started from a disastrous situation, if you think that when the Morandi Bridge collapsed there were not even the minimum technical standards for maintenance, that is, the rules to establish which mortar to use or to establish that a certain panel must hold a certain power.
After the collapse, something moved, but not in the right way. The Guidelines for the safety of viaducts and bridges have been written, in practice the rules that establish the new safety parameters. Except that these rules have remained incomplete and above all fail to be applied. They do not explain, for example, what happens in the period between a check and the intervention on a bridge. And so, in cascade, the inspectors put a speed limit to protect themselves, creating queues and inconveniences.
Another example is Ansfisa, the National Agency for the safety of motorway infrastructures. A week ago the government appointed the engineer Domenico De Bartolomeo as the new director general of the agency: the third in three years. It is a pity, however, that the Agency, commissioned in 2018 by the then Minister of Transport at M5s Danilo Toninelli, has not yet carried out an inspection. Three years only to appoint the top management, then changed with each change of government, and to hire the staff, among other things undersized compared to the initial design of the grillini.
Again: it was recently established that an inspector can autonomously close a section of motorway in case of danger or risk. But the inspectors are few.
What leaves politics to the new Autostrade that is about to be born is a legacy that cannot be evaded. And here we come to another question: will the public be a greater guarantee than the private sector on the maintenance front? Certainly moving from a public-private relationship to a public-public one (the Ministry of Transport which will discuss with Autostrade led by Cdp) will facilitate everything, but the push to rewrite the Convention is the element that can mark a discontinuity with respect to the past . The state should have and at this point it will have to prove itself up to the situation. We will need a company manager for Autostrade who is up to the challenge and the physiological spoil system will have to take into account the fact that the private sector, albeit with its mistakes, has guaranteed millions of Italians, and not only, to travel far and wide. wide for Italy. Even the public, as shown by some episodes involving Anas, did not always prove to be up to the situation. This is why the change of ownership alone is not enough to say that the Autostrade affair is closed.
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