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Conte Calls Rebuilt Genoa Bridge a Model for Italy Restart

Conte Calls Rebuilt Genoa Bridge a Model for Italy Restart

(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, battling to find a way out of Italy’s nationwide lockdown, hailed the near-completion of a new bridge in Genoa following a deadly 2018 accident as a model for restarting the country.

Workers at the construction site, which has stayed open through weeks of virus containment measures, lifted the last steel section into place for a new 202-million euro ($219 million) viaduct due to reopen this summer. The 2018 accident at the Morandi bridge killed 43 people.

Conte Calls Rebuilt Genoa Bridge a Model for Italy Restart

“This is a symbolic construction site not just for Genoa but for all of Italy, it’s an Italy that gets up again, rolls up its sleeves and doesn’t lose heart,” Conte said. “The Genoa model is a model we will try to replicate.”

Conte has come under fire from coalition allies and companies, especially in wealthy northern regions, for charting a cautious path in easing the lockdown starting from May 4.

Speaking of the victims of the bridge collapse, Conte said, “judgments on responsibility in this tragedy have not yet been completed and will be completed.”

While the new 1,067-meter (3,500 feet) bridge built by Salini Impregilo SpA and Fincantieri SpA is almost ready, a dispute between Conte’s government and infrastructure giant Atlantia SpA, whose subsidiary ran the stretch of road spanned by the Morandi, remains unresolved.

The anti-establishment Five Star Movement, the biggest party in the ruling coalition, has pressed to revoke toll-road concessions held by Autostrade per l’Italia SpA, owned by the Benetton family’s Atlantia. The center-left Democrats, or PD, the other main party in the government, prefer a negotiated solution.

The government will decide on toll-road concessions “much sooner” than the opening date for the new span, Infrastructure Minister Paola De Micheli told newspaper La Stampa earlier Tuesday. “We will be rigorous in the evaluation of the Autostrade case,” De Micheli, a PD lawmaker, said in the interview.

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