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The Italian Foreign Ministry today sent a protest note to its French peers regarding the issue of the border between the two states on Mont Blanc. Where does it come from? The issue has been dragging on unresolved for a couple of centuries and bringing it back to the fore was a parliamentary issue that was discussed a few days ago and relating to a “high-altitude border incident” that took place in June 2019. The Parliamentary discussion left things as they were but on the other hand the echo that the singular question has received on social networks (based on a bombastic tweet by Giorgia Meloni that spoke of an “invasion” of Italian territory by France) also led to Farnesina to clarify the question.
The casus belli
But, what has caused this (diplomatic) war on a border that passes through the ice at an altitude of more than 4,000 meters? On June 27 last year, the municipalities of Chamonix and Saint Gervais (French side of the mountain) issued a joint ordinance to prohibit paragliding activities in a “portion” of territory that also includes an area that is under Italian sovereignty. In particular, the Torino refuge, the Helbronner point and a part of the Skyway, the cable car that goes up to the top of Mont Blanc. Unilateral act, that of the two transalpine municipalities, which, although not endorsed by the central authorities of Paris, had immediately provoked protests by Italy. Among them, a question from the parliamentarian of the Brothers of Italy Francesco Lollobrigida, included in Montecitorio’s agenda only in mid-October, 16 months after the events. Two weeks ago, a directive from the Haute-Savoie prefecture joined this episode, which introduced some rules for the protection of the massif, once again extended to the territory that is the subject of the dispute.
“Hands off Mont Blanc!”
“Macron, get your hands off Mont Blanc!” Giorgia Meloni gets angry following the example of the episode, which fears a “progressive” annexation by France of a piece of Italian territory and a “servile” attitude on the part of the government. A controversy that is music for sovereign ears and that is picked up with the same vibrant tones by other exponents of the center right. In the courtroom, for the government, the undersecretary of Foreign Relations, Iván Scalfarotto, responded, recalling that Italy had not immediately recognized the order of Chamonix and Saint Gervais, because it would have constituted a dangerous precedent. Scalfarotto also recalled that Paris and Rome have for some time expressed their willingness to clarify the issue of the border on Mont Blanc as part of a bilateral commission. Today’s note from Farnesina later reiterated this line.
The intervention of the Farnesina
Following instructions from Chancellor Luigi Di Maio, the embassy in Paris formally expressed to the French authorities the Italian “strong disappointment” with the measures adopted by the Haute-Savoie prefecture and which have also affected territories under Italian sovereignty. Di Maio recalled that Italy and France agreed on the need to “avoid any unilateral initiative by local authorities” in these areas. The minister also asked that the French authorities be formulated with a request to intervene in the Haute-Savoie prefecture so that it does not include “in the official local measures the areas beyond the border that are within the Italian territory, and as such they are under the national sovereignty of Italy. ” In any case, “those unilateral measures that cannot and should not affect Italian territory,” Di Maio said, “cannot have any effect and are not recognized by Italy.”
A dispute of 1860
The Italo-French border on Mont Blanc is a dispute that actually spans centuries, born in practice since Savoy passed from the kingdom of Piedmont to France (March 1860). A series of cartographic studies never manage to reach a shared decision, the outbreak of World War II further aggravates the issue. In the sixties (also in correspondence with the opening of the Mont Blanc tunnel) we talked about it again; The dividing line between the two states is considered to be that of the watershed between the two sides, but the maps presented by the two parties do not appear to match. The dispute, which both Rome and Paris continue to consider irrelevant, dragged on unsuccessfully into the 1990s.
October 21, 2020 (change October 21, 2020 | 20:01)
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