Italy’s draft budget law for 2027 allocated €5.43 billion to the national rail network over the next two years. The funds will be sent to infrastructure manager RFI, with the Terzo Valico project getting the largest share of the funds with €1.6 billion.
According to article 77 of the bill, the ‘Services’ part of the programme contract will receive €600 million in 2027 and €970 million in 2028 for extraordinary maintenance of the network. The ‘Investments’ part gets €2.19 billion in 2027 and €1.67 billion in 2028. Of these, €1.45 billion is earmarked for programmes “aimed at improving safety and the technological development of the national rail network”.
The rest is divided among four specific projects. On top of the Terzo Valico, the bill sets aside €500 million for the Trento bypass, key to access the future Brenner Base Tunnel. Another €170 million will fund the doubling of three sections of the Naples-Bari line (Frasso Telesino-Telese, Telese-Vitulano and Apice-Orsara), while €140 million goes to the doubling of the Giampilieri-Fiumefreddo section on the Messina-Catania line.
A geological variant
The Terzo Valico funds refer “specifically to the variant made necessary by the significant geomechanical conditions that emerged during construction”, the bill states. The project will receive a further €350 million in 2029 and €500 million in 2030, bringing its total to €2.45 billion over four years. The Messina-Catania doubling gets an extra €40 million in 2029.
The resources will be available for legally binding commitments as soon as the law enters into force, without waiting for the programme contract to be updated. The Ministry of Economy and Finance will also be able to shift funds between rail projects if needed. In 2027 and 2028, the money will be transferred to RFI twice a year, in January and July, taking into account what has actually been spent.
Webuild vs RFI
The funding comes in the middle of a dispute between RFI and Webuild, which leads Cociv, the general contractor for the Terzo Valico. Webuild argues it should immediately receive €2.1 billion for unforeseen costs, while RFI says it has paid what it owed, Italian media Il Post. Around 500 workers were furloughed in October, including about 300 on various Terzo Valico sites.
This is not the only project caught up in the dispute. Webuild-led consortia are also building the Trento bypass and the Messina-Catania doubling. In other words, almost all the projects named in the budget law are in the hands of the same contractor.
The Terzo Valico is a 53-kilometre line linking the port of Genoa to the Po Valley, with a 27-kilometre double tunnel under the Apennines as its main section. Works started in 2012. The Trento bypass, on the other hand, is meant to take freight trains out of the city on the Brenner axis, where the base tunnel itself recently slipped to 2034 and the German access routes might not be ready before 2050.
Whether €1.6 billion will be enough to settle matters on the Terzo Valico remains to be seen. Italian media reported that Webuild asked for around €3 billion to complete the line and the Genoa junction, although the breakdown of that figure has not been made public. However, it seems clear that the government intends to keep Italy’s main freight corridors moving, at least on paper.