The reasons for Italy’s flop for Expo2030
It is not only the fault of the unequal challenge of the 190 million invested by Riyadh in every part of the globe, but also of the not very incisive "Italian campaign", if in the end just 17 chose Rome, rather than the at least 60 expected. Guiglia's Notebook
As the tennis world champions led by Jannik Sinner and Pecco Bagnaia, winner of the MotoGP for the second time, have just taught, to climb to the top of the universe you must, first of all, believe in it. The humiliating defeat of Rome , the capital of Italy and still today "caput mundi" in the international perception, is the mirror of an institutional planet that from Palazzo Chigi to the Campidoglio passing through the Farnesina, has given up the Expo 2030 game as lost before even playing it.
LOSE AGAINST RIAD, BUT ALSO AGAINST BUSAN
Of course, competing with Riyadh, which won by a landslide in the first round of the voting nations in Paris, was very complicated, and we knew it. Petrodollars against Italian history, beauty and excellence: imagine which side the majority of voter countries could have taken, and indeed have taken, in the name of a geopolitics that privileges interests even over human rights. Or perhaps the world does not know that an absolute Islamic monarchy reigns in Saudi Arabia with all the harmful consequences of the case?
But when Rome even comes in third, taking half the votes that went to a city that the inhabitants of the Earth don't even know where it is – Busan, a port city and not even the capital of South Korea -, then the alibi of petrodollars and rights trampled humans is only partially valid.
THE REASONS FOR ROME'S DEFEAT AT EXPO 2030
It is not only the fault of the unequal challenge of the 190 million invested by Riyadh in every part of the globe, but also of the not very incisive "Italian campaign", if in the end just 17 chose Rome, rather than the at least 60 expected. A sign that the diplomatic network has also made waves on all continents. Starting with the one in which we are the third largest economy: Europe.
In the hour of mortification, it is no consolation to establish whether the main insufficiency lies with the government (the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, did not even accompany the delegation to Paris) or with Roberto Gualtieri's Municipality. We talk about Rome for the Colosseum, of course, but also for the filth of the waste, the degradation outside the station, the arrogant lack of taxis, the potholes in the street. A reality that doesn't help and needs to be eradicated quickly.
The bitter truth is that, in the face of the excessive power of petrodollars, that winning alliance, Prodi/Moratti style, which then brought the Expo to Milan in 2015, never took off. They worked together but, above all, they believed in it.
May this affair teach the institutions, for future reference, not to make everyone and everything wrong again, if today the roads of the world do not lead to Rome.
(Published in L'Arena di Verona, Il Giornale di Vicenza, Bresciaoggi and Gazzetta di Mantova)
www.federicoguiglia.com
In the photo: Giuseppe Scognamiglio, general director of the Expo2030 Roma promoting committee.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/expo2030-motivi-fallimento-roma/ on Thu, 30 Nov 2023 06:16:35 +0000.