ROME – Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Wednesday that he supported the completion of the controversial high-speed railway (TAV) which would link Turin with Lyon in France, having expressed doubts about the project in the past, according to government sources.

 This could be crucial as the final decision about the project will be taken Friday, though there are still deep divisions within government over the long-standing issue. The League supports the project while the Five Star Movement for the most part opposes it.

 “To stop TAV would cost more than to complete it,” Conte said Wednesday evening, echoing a pragmatic point that others, including Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, have made in the past. Huge amounts of taxpayers’ money are a stake, he said, and the EU was willing to fund more of the project now. Alternatives to the project would not be in the “national interest” because they would be more costly, he added.

 Any alternative to TAV would have to be funded by Italy alone. Currently the EU pays for 55 per cent of the project, and Conte has previously pointed to the possibility that France could pay more than they do.

“Parliament will decide,” Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio retorted, though he held back from criticising Conte directly. There are reports, however, that he faces significant internal opposition within his party over the controversial project, with some M5S representatives disobeying orders to leave the Senate building in protest at Conte’s address.

 M5S have seized on a government commissioned cost-benefit analysis of TAV, which reported that Italy would lose some seven or eight billion euros by continuing the project. The League dismisses this report.

 Salvini earlier in the week called on M5S Transport Minister Danilo Toninelli, who vehemently opposes the costly railway, to “unblock” TAV. Though denying reports that he wants him removed in a reshuffle at the heart of government, Salvini said, apparently alluding to Toninelli: “It is a fundamental project but it is not the only one that a minister has blocked, and either the minister of blocks unblocks it or I don't understand what he's doing in government.”

 The project, which was first conceived in the 1990s, has faced staunch opposition from organised groups ever since. "Conte has shown that he doesn't know how determined we are," said one the messages on a website linked to the resistance movement, No TAV, which has at times been likened to partisan resistance in World War II.  

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