Police on Tuesday clashed
with protestors aiming to prevent the removal of olive trees in
Melendugno, in the southern Puglia region, for a tunnel for the
TranAdriatic Pipeline (TAP) gas pipeline project.
Police charged twice in order to move protestors away from
gates to the work site and a number of people were injured.
Some of the protestors suffered bruising and others felt ill
after the clashes, union sources said.
The removal of the olive trees was suspended.
The TranAdriatic Pipeline, which was recently approved by the
environment ministry and by the Council of State, Italy's
highest administrative court, aims to bring Caspian gas to
Europe.
Puglia Governor Michele Emiliano deplored the clashes and
said "the government has proved incapable of listening to
Puglia".
"Using the massive deployment of forces that was set up
today, the government shows its incapacity to listen and
politically process the requests of an entire region which has
in its ruling programme, elaborated from the bottom and voted
for by hundreds of thousands of Puglians, the transfer of the
TAP link to another area".
Emiliano said earlier this month that uprooting olive trees
to make way for the TAP was "illegal".
Voicing his support for farmers who clashed with police,
Emiliano however added: "the regional government does
not have instruments to stop a project that the government has
told police to protect, an operation considered absolutely
strategic".
Before he became Italian premier, then Foreign Minister Paolo
Gentiloni said last year that "The creation of the Trans
Adriatic Pipeline is strategic for the diversification of
provision sources" not just for "the EU and the Balkans" but
also "for Italy".
Speaking in June at the foreign ministry in Rome during the
fourth session of the inter-governmental commission on economic
cooperation between Italy and Azerbaijan, Gentiloni said "after
the inauguration of the project in Thessaloniki, about one month
ago, a challenge has opened: seeing Azeri gas reach Italy by
2020" .
"Now we can look at new horizons", he said. The objective,
recalled Gentiloni, is to boost economic and political relations
between Rome and Baku, considered a "strategic regional
partner".
The TAP consortium is made up of the following companies:
BP (20%), SOCAR (20%), Snam (20%), Fluxys (19%), Enags
(16%) and Axpo (5%).
It is set to invest 5.6 billion euros in the gas pipeline in
the next few years.
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