Twenty months after its foundation, the Siena Biotechnopole is still at a standstill and has actually seen 40 percent of its budget cut by the Meloni government. A case that quickly became political: «I’m here areas of the majority government adjacent to the no vax world», is the explanation given by the regional health councilor, Simone Bezzini, after the government’s decision to cut 130 million euros to the Foundation established in August 2022, with the aim of creating an anti-pandemic hub to produce vaccines and monoclonal antibodies.
The councilor, speaking on the sidelines of a conference at the Meyer Health Campus, explains: «I’m terribly worried: I believe that the government led by President Meloni has never liked this project, and there has never been the will to carry it forward. Everything has been at a standstill for 18 months, between the Biotechnopole and the National Anti-Pandemic Center there were almost 400 million euros allocated: not even a single euro has been spent, there is not a research laboratory, there is not a scientific project, not there is an office where there are people at work. Because in my opinion he doesn’t believe in this project, the government doesn’t want to do it, above all it doesn’t want to be the national center against pandemics». Bezzini addresses the political point thus: «There is also a cultural aversion on the right towards policies, tools, how new events of a pandemic nature are countered or will have to be countered in the future, and therefore there is a tendency to dismantle everything that it had been done. The Biotecnopolo Foundation was established in the summer of 2022, the government took office at the beginning of the same autumn, it has been entrenched behind the modification of the statute for 18 months. It takes a government 2 or 3 months to amend a statute, here it’s 18 months and there is no statute, not a single euro has been spent, everything is blocked, 130 million are taken away, it seems to me that everything is going in the direction of destructuring this project. There is a cultural theme, links between parts of the right and segments of the anti-vax world, so in my opinion there is also a theme of political-cultural adversity on the right with respect to this project.”
If the Biotechnopole was wanted by the Draghi government, calling into question scientists such as Rino Rappuoli, Anthony Fauci, Giorgio Palù and even two Nobel prize winners such as Giorgio Parisi and Emmanuelle Charpentier, in the face of the current stalemate Bezzini speaks of a desire to “dismantle the project” . And he adds: «I hope there is a mobilization on the part of all institutional and social subjects, I hope that the world of science also makes itself heard. Other countries in the world are developing projects of this kind, they are taking into account the lesson that the pandemic has given us, but instead we are removing that lesson. And it’s not just the fact that a national research center for the country’s health security will not be built, or will only be built to a minimal extent., but there is also a great loss for Tuscany and Siena, because the Biotechnopole would have meant investments, jobs and related industries. There is a great national question, but there is also a slap in the face to Siena, to Tuscany.”
«Since Giorgia Meloni became Prime Minister, governor Giani and his councilors have become absolute champions in who can shoot the hardest – replies the group leader of the Brothers of Italy in the Region Francesco Torselli – As Minister Schillaci has assured several times, the anti-pandemic center will be built and the government wants it. The problem is that the Democratic Party continues to be the empty-handed party that was used to knocking on Rome to ask for money. Instead, this government knows that it cannot be spent and squandered and provides resources when there are projects.”
The debate also heats up in Siena: «This government is humiliating our Province and its capital», attacks the president of the Province, David Bussagli, while the Tuscan parliamentarians of FdI in a note respond to the criticisms for the cut in resources: «The left has had, and still has today evidently, a vision of quantity of money, rather than quality of projects”.
