ROME (ITALPRESS) – “Article 119 of the Constitution stipulates that the Republic recognizes the peculiarity of islands and promotes the necessary measures to remove the disadvantages arising from insularity, an article that then must be effectively implemented.” This was said by the Minister for European Affairs, NRP and Cohesion Policies, Tommaso Foti, during the hearing at the parliamentary committee on the contrast of disadvantages arising from insularity.”This commission was born precisely from the desire to monitor but also to give indications to implement a constitutional precept that undoubtedly, from the standpoint of what is insularity, starts from some objective conditions of disadvantage that cannot be concealed,” he added. “The first theme may be that of transport: the cost burden in the matter of transport concerns people, goods and services, and therefore it is clear that when we talk about the competitiveness of systems, we obviously have to take into account an additional cost that two regions and many other smaller islands must necessarily evaluate. Another issue is the environment with a fragile ecosystem, coastal erosion, drought and in some respects, there is also the issue of the uncontrolled flow of tourists.” For Minister Foti, “there is then another issue that affects the whole country in general but I have to refer, in this case, to the areas in question which is that of depopulation and demographic crisis that evidently today we feel only as ‘aging of the populationè, in reality it has very specific reflections and they are the reflections that concern reduced employment rates and a lower qualification of the workforce. Now this framework A serves to say that in the first place, there is not only a theoretical aspect but also a practical aspect, the first policy that can be implemented is that of cohesion.” – photo Ipa agency -(ITALPRESS).
