Dear comrades,
on behalf of the militants of the Communist Front of Italy, let me welcome all the Parties attending this meeting and, in particular, thank the Communist Party of the Workers of Spain for hosting it.
Over the past few years, Italy has been hit by increasingly frequent devastating floods, often triggered by extreme weather events. These disasters, which have been worsened by the utter lack of effective environmental protection policies by both local and national institutions, have resulted in social emergencies that sometimes have reoccurred in the same regions just a few months apart.
One need only think of the tragedies that hit Marche (in September 2022), Tuscany (in November 2023 and again in March 2024), Emilia-Romagna, which was swept by floods in May 2023 and again in September 2024, Sicily in October 2024. Since 77% of the Italian territory is predominantly mountainous and hilly, floods often come with landslides and mudslides that sweep away anything that stands in their way. In addition to floods, heavy earthquakes battered Central Italy: Abruzzo in 2009 and 2017, Emilia-Romagna in 2012, Lazio and other regions in 2016. Such events, as the collapse of the Student Dorm in L’Aquila or the complete destruction of entire villages in Central Italy, have caused lots of deaths and have left deep, open wounds in the people’s collective memory.
The conflict between the predatory capitalistic mode of production and nature continues to threaten the working class and popular masses in other ways too. Construction industry -or, more accurately, building speculation- in Naples and other areas of southern Italy affected by bradyseism and volcanic activity, is an example of how, under capitalism, profit is more important than human lives. Just as in L’Aquila building speculation developed in an area which sits on a fault line, so in Naples entire densely populated neighborhoods of public housing for low-income people have been built in Campi Flegrei, on the largest active volcano in Europe. Today when this explosive volcano shows threatening signs of activity, it turns out that there is no evacuation plan for the population, nor there can be. Simply, no building should have been raised in that area. Another hazardous, and expensive project which is useful only for the builders
and whose implementation is currently about to start is the bridge across the Strait of Messina, an area with strong sea currents, frequent earthquakes and affected by seismic movements which drive the two shores apart.
In recent years, floods stand out as particularly dramatic events owing to their frequency, immediate impact and scale of devastation. They have caused many deaths, missing persons, and a staggering number of people being evacuated, not to mention material damages amounting to millions of Euros. The lack in structured territorial planning has left rivers and waterways without the necessary containment works and led to the embankments’ collapse and subsequent flooding. As volunteers involved in the rescue efforts, our comrades have been able to see the severity of the situation up close. Entire families have been forced into makeshift camps in precarious sanitary conditions, facing the concrete risk of diseases outbreaks. In 2023, in Emilia Romagna, an emergency vaccination plan had to be launched, but it was arranged with insufficient means causing long waits and hospital transfers for thousands of people.
Once again, it is the popular strata who pay the price. The increasing frequency of such extreme climate events as floods, droughts and landslides is a glaring sign of the global environmental crisis which is a direct consequence of pollution, global warming, and climate change driven by the capitalist mode of production. A mode of production that, in the name of profit, breeds destruction and death for the peoples.
The barbarity and rot of capitalism are laid bare in their incapability to reconcile the insatiable hunger for profit with the protection of people’s lives and the territories they live in.
We firmly assert that these are not tragic acts of fate. While it’s undeniable that the current mode of production contributes to climate change and thus to the increase of extreme weather events, it is unacceptable to consider hydrogeological instability and the resulting social emergencies as mere “natural” consequences of global warming.
The areas hit by recent floods have long been known to have a high degree of hydrogeological vulnerability. The communities who inhabit these territories repeatedly faced the most dire situations, yet there continues to be a lack of substantial investment in monitoring or securing waterways and at-risk zones. Even when early weather warnings are issued, effective evacuation plans are seldom, if ever, enacted, leaving the population exposed and unprepared. These disasters are also the result of irrational land consumption due to real estate speculation and unbridled urban sprawl, even near rivers that have a history of flooding. Weather events labeled as “exceptional” are now occurring with an alarming frequency, revealing the depth of the climate crisis we are going through. In this context, without serious policies aimed at preventing emergencies and securing territories, which provide concrete resources, adequate facilities, as well as a timely and well tested emergency protocol, simply telling people to leave their homes or move to higher floors amounts to abandoning them to their fate. During the May 2023 floods in Emilia-Romagna, the outrageous decision to deploy a large contingent of civil protection forces for Bruce Springsteen’s concert in Ferrara rather than for the devastated area is symbolic of this shameful attitude of bourgeois central and local authorities.
Responsibilities must be denounced loud and clear in order to reject this mode of production and its management. We firmly denounce the continuous blame-shifting between the central government and local authorities, a cynical show played at the people’s expense. We denounce the propaganda maneuvers of both the center-right and center-left parties, who exploit natural disasters to garner support for their political interests. Statements from members of the government like Minister Musumeci -who blames these catastrophes on the population’s alleged “cultural shortcomings,” or describes them as “irreversible”- reveal deliberate efforts to obscure the real causes. There is no genuine commitment to change, no will to address the structural causes of these emergencies.
Even more shameful is the sad sight of regional governors and center-left representatives accusing each other in public, desperately trying to shrug off blame for disasters. However, the truth is there for all to see: bourgeois politics has failed across the board. These same tragedies repeat themselves just months apart, and the suffering of thousands is reduced to a mere electoral talking point. The lack of preventive measures and the repetition of the same failed policies show that this economic and political system is incapable of meeting the people’s real needs. The broken levees are not only those of rivers but also those of a rotten system that clearly shows that private profit of the minority is incompatible with the needs of workers and the popular strata, who are the majority of society.
Regional and municipal authorities do bear direct responsibility for territorial management and monitoring, but it’s equally obvious that the central governments -both the current and the previous ones-have chosen to divert resources from social spending to fund the war machine and send massive aid to the fascist Ukrainian regime. In a country where entire territories are collapsing under the weight of natural disasters and crumbling infrastructure, the bourgeois State prefers to pour money into warfare rather than investing in people’s safety.
In 2024 alone, military spending exceeded 29 billion euros with an increase by 5.1% over the previous year, and by 12.5% over 2021. With the consent of the government and President Mattarella, as well as of almost all the bourgeois parties, in blatant violation of its Constitution, Italy is being dragged ever deeper into an imperialist conflict that has nothing to do with the interests of the popular masses. More cuts in social spending, but no limits to the increase in military spending, which is exempt from the constraints of the EU Stability Pact. Imperialist war must go on, capitalists do not care about human lives before the prospect of huge profit. This is the concept of stability shared by the monopolies of the military industry’s lobby and their lackeys in the EU bodies. This is the path taken also by the current and previous Italian governments, regardless of their color: further brutal cuts in healthcare, education, environmental safety, natural disasters prevention and first response, as well as in other services and facilities for the satisfaction of the proletariat’s needs in the face of an enormous investment in weaponry. The cost of this reckless strategy is paid every day by the popular strata, especially those who live in the most vulnerable areas, forced to face disasters that could have been prevented. It’s a criminal trade-off: money for weapons in exchange for misery, destruction, and death. In addition, against this already grim backdrop,
the law on the so called “Differentiated Regional Autonomy”, recently passed by the Italian parliament, will deepen the gap between regions by enforcing an anti-people policy of resources allocation that will favor the richest regions, deemed more attractive and profitable for capitalist monopolies, to the detriment of the poorest ones and their greater need for investment.
We must clearly state that the same inadequacy demonstrated by the bourgeois state during the pandemic can be seen every day with regard to rail transport, where the shortage of personnel for the maintenance of trains and lines, as well as the lack of investment in technological modernization, in addition to causing constant delays and inconveniences for people, makes traveling by train very dangerous for both passengers and railroad workers. The increase in train accidents is a clear example of this. The country’s road infrastructure is in even worse conditions. The privatization of the highway network has allowed huge profits to capital without state control over the maintenance of the infrastructure, which, of course, private companies have not carried out. This criminal attitude of the bourgeois state and the private management companies led to the tragedy of the collapse of the Morandi bridge in Genoa, with 46
victims and the evacuation of an entire neighborhood. Almost all the many bridges of the highway network and a good part of the tunnels are at risk of collapse. Obsolescence and lack of maintenance affect most transport infrastructures, but also those for the storage of flammable or toxic materials, with serious danger for the population and the workers involved.
While tens of thousands of families lose their homes, jobs, and their material standards of life are constantly worsening due to both the capitalist crisis and the unfavorable correlation of forces, the bourgeois governments continue to allocate millions for funding war and arms production. This is why we demand the immediate reallocation of public funds currently used to send armaments and military
personnel abroad and their use for the concrete support for people stricken with disasters, to rebuild homes, to reclaim at-risk areas, and to implement structural solutions to prevent future tragedies. More generally, we demand these public funds to be used for the satisfaction of the proletariat’s needs and the people’s well-being.
In the event of weather conditions that are dangerous for the workers, their safety and health, we demand the suspension of all production activities with no prejudice for wages until a safe situation is restored, for the workers not to be forced to choose between their safety and the need to earn a living.
Our solidarity with affected communities, from Marche to Emilia-Romagna, from Tuscany to all the other areas devastated by natural disasters, has not been just in words. Our comrades have supported in person workers, firefighters, and the many volunteers who mobilized to help those who had lost everything, saving lives and providing basic assistance in circumstances that would otherwise have been left to total neglect. In many cases, our efforts filled the void left by the absence of the bourgeois State. As communists, we believe that solidarity must be concrete, visible, and operative: being there when needed, standing with the people, and making a real contribution in the territories ravaged by the criminal choices of bourgeois power.
Solidarity alone is not enough. We must also denounce the political and institutional responsibility of those who are, in an entanglement between politics and business, complicit with private capital that extracts profit from disasters, turning reconstruction into an opportunity for speculation and exploitation.
Unless the capitalistic system is overthrown, even the most sincere and massive solidarity risks being in vain, forcing into the logic of “emergency management” events that are the predictable result of the mode of production we live under.
Taking active part in relief efforts in flood-stricken areas, providing the affected communities with concrete material support, our Party, along with the Communist Youth Front, has made popular solidarity a reality, bringing the people our analysis and uncompromising slogans that can never be co-opted by bourgeois governments and parties.
Long live the proletarian solidarity!
Only the people can save the people!
