ROME – A ceremony planned to mark the opening of an assembly plant for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has been cancelled amid a parliamentary row about the sky-high cost of the defence program.

Lockheed Martin Corp, the aeronautics company responsible for making the planes, announced that the inauguration had been scrapped at the behest of the Italian defence ministry. Joe LaMarca, spokesman for Lockheed, said that workers at the plant in Cameri would build the first aircraft despite the cancelled inauguration.

The ceremony was scheduled to take place on Thursday (July 18.) Christopher Bogdan, American Air Force Lieutenant responsible for the F-35 program in the United States, was amongst those invited to participate.

Antonio Zuliani, spokesman for the Italian Secretariat of National Defence Procurement, denied that the cancellation was due to political or technical problems. He said that the ceremony had been “postponed to a later date” because of issues “relating to the presence of all the guests.”

Italy plans to spend about 12 billion euros on the F-35 planes over the next 45 years. Last year, the former Defence Minister cut the planned purchase of jets from 131 to 90.

The United States, by contrast, is expected to buy over 3,000 of the planes in the coming decades, according to a report published on the Reuters news website. Other countries to have formed significant contracts with Lockheed include Britain, Australia, the Netherlands and Canada.

Italy’s participation in the program has been met with virulent criticism from both members of the public and political parties. Last month, a lower-house motion supported by members of the coalition cabinet ruled that the F-35 program would be reviewed for six months. Passed by 381 votes to 149, the motion also decreed that parliament would have to be consulted before more public funds were invested in the program.

The deal with Lockheed includes maintenance contracts for Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica, the largest high-tech industrial group based in the country. The Italian state holds about 30 percent of Finmeccanca’s shares.

Peppe Grillo’s party, the M5S, has been particularly outspoken in its condemnation of the F-35 program. An M5S spokesman quoted in Il Fatto Quotidiano stated that the decision to cancel the ceremony in Cameri reflected the hypocrisy at the heart of the plans. “They must have noticed that isn’t very popular to throw 13 billion euros out of the window whilst making cuts to funding for schools and public transport.”

The spokesman accused the ruling political classes of lacking the courage to pull out of F-35. He said that they were seeking to shelter themselves from criticism by cancelling the ceremony marking the start of the building process. “Production, however, will not stop, despite the continuing problems faced by Italians.”