Italian PM Giuseppe Conte Is Considering Digging A Tunnel Between The Mainland And Sicily

If there’s one thing the pandemic has done globally, it has been forcing countries to look inward and reassess both their infrastructure and their reliance of products and services on China. The U.S. has already vowed to start making drug components domestically and President Trump has long been proposing infrastructure upgrades. 

And in keeping with the trend of upgrading infrastructure – which hasn’t quite been Italy’s expertise anytime over the last few decades – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has now said he is considering an underwater tunnel that links Sicily to mainland Italy. 

Conte mulled the plans during a speech he gave on Sunday evening in which he announced several plans that appear to be focused on the country maintaining its infrastructure independence. Before building such a tunnel, Conte said that the country would need to improve its internal routes first. 

As of today, Sicily is still the only region of Italy which cannot be serviced by the country’s “Eurostar” trains.

The Strait of Messina Bridge has been proposed between the mainland and Silicy for years, but was cancelled in both 2006 and 2013 due to budget constraints. Now that the entire world has collectively decided to ignore budget constraints and allow Central Banks to do whatever they want, it’s no surprise that a project connecting the 576 km between Calabria and the mainland may actually move forward. 

At the same speech, Conte also said he wanted to focus on rolling out broadband across the country before reviewing whether or not China should be allowed to supply the country with 5G technology, Bloomberg reported. 

“Italy needs a single grid and recent talks will be wrapped up with a clear path by the end of this month,” he said. Given the recent controversy surrounding Tik-Tok and ongoing questions about Chinese hardware and maintaining privacy, our guess is that Huawei may not be leading the list of infrastructure providers to help implement such a network. 

But when it comes to the tunnel, there’s one “genius” we can recommend…