“The Republic and autonomies have accompanied the development of Italian democracy over these decades,” said the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, during the celebrations of the eightieth anniversary of the Paris agreement that granted autonomous status to Trentino Alto Adige. “The Paris agreement – added Mattarella – was the result of the farsighted will of two statesmen who were able to identify an innovative and courageous solution to the South Tyrol/Alto Adige issue.” “The two young Republics – reborn with independence the Austrian one and established by referendum the Italian one – wanted” to affirm “with the agreement” a “principle reaffirmed in the Italian Constitution: one is not ‘allochthonous’, foreign, in one’s own home,” Mattarella added.
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The 80-year-old agreement that still represents a model
Mattarella spoke of the “special occasion of the eightieth anniversary of the signing of the De Gasperi – Gruber agreement, which still today holds the indisputable value of a founding, historical and symbolic element, and which coincides with the eightieth anniversary of the Italian Republic.” “Naturally, different visions inspired the respective positions. What emerged was not a trivial compromise, but a model that is still invoked today in situations of difficult resolution in Europe. The two leaders shared the conviction that it was necessary to safeguard the German and Ladin-speaking minorities present in the region, protecting their identities, ensuring the peaceful coexistence of each of the populations living in the territory. It was not an easy choice: it intervened in territorial areas contested during the First World War, regulated only by the Treaty of Saint Germain of 1919 and subsequently subject to severe forced ethnic policies by fascism and Nazism. These even reached the options of 1939, provided for by the Mussolini-Hitler agreements, which envisaged the migration to Germany of citizens of German culture. The claim was to arbitrarily make geopolitical borders coincide with ethnic borders, conditioning the rights of citizens present in the territories on the cultural identity they carried,” explained the head of state.”
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Europe has given depth to our common culture
“The Italian Republic, from its inception, has believed that enhancing the specificities of communities located at the borders was an enrichment of the values of coexistence of our civilization. A condition that the European Union has been able to further develop, giving ever greater depth to our common culture,” emphasized Sergio Mattarella during the ceremony. “The examples of ambitious and concrete collaboration, eighty years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, reaffirm the validity of the model developed in South Tyrol/Alto Adige, its exemplary nature at the international level and the value of autonomy for these territories. A shared heritage, precious for our two countries and for Europe, to be safeguarded and promoted with consistency and determination, as demonstrated by the recent constitutional law with new rules on the Statute of autonomy. The Republic is grateful to the populations of these lands for the contribution they have given and continue to give to the progress of our country and to the common European life,” finally added the President of the Republic while speaking in Merano, together with his Austrian counterpart, Alexander Van der Bellen.
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