Polemics, protests, silences, disinterest and reticence: the Treaty of Osimo, signed in the town in the Marche region on 10 November 1975, marked a controversial page in the history of the eastern Italian border. In the face of historians, observers and politicians who judged it a masterpiece in the creation of a Ostpolitik Italian in the midst of the Cold War aimed at perfecting the already good relations with communist Yugoslavia, the Treaty of Osimo was immediately opposed by the Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles, while in Parliament the only vain opposition came from the Italian Social Movement. If at the time the bilateral Italian-Yugoslavian agreement officially defined the respective sovereignties over the former Zone A and B of the never-established Free Territory of Trieste and the project of the cross-border Industrial Free Zone immediately foundered, the question of compensation by Yugoslavia for the abandoned, nationalized or confiscated assets from the exiles of the districts of Capodistria and Buie remained open. On the other hand, the implosion of Yugoslavia in the early nineties would have opened up opportunities to renegotiate the border or at least the compensation. This and other things were discussed at a high-profile scientific conference organized in spring 2019 by Coordinamento Adriatico APS in Osimo, in the province of Ancona, and from that morning of study were drawn the contributions collected in the slim volume (72 pages) edited by Giuseppe de Vergottini “Osimo, un Trattato Che Fa Ancora Discuso” (Wolters Kluwer – Cedam, Padova 2020).

The current President of FederEsuli opens the series of essays with an acute historical and legal analysis from which the growing disinterest of the Italian ruling class in the question of Trieste is bitterly evident, which led from the passionate patriotic days of 26 October and 4 November 1954 to the signing of the infamous Treaty quietly and even excluding the Farnesina.

Professor Ida Caracciolo focused on the issue of abandoned goods, reviewing the jurisprudence of international law which presents a series of precedents and similar cases that Italy could have used to reiterate its reasons, but no minister or diplomat has resorted to it.

Significant was the speech by Professor Igor Pellicciari, who focused on the impact of the Treaty of Osimo on the relations between Italy, Slovenia and Croatia, with respect to which the governments did nothing to renegotiate the issue, both because in the so-called Second Republic the interest in foreign policy was gradually decreasing, and because the declaration of independence of Ljubljana and Zagreb was contemporary with Tangentopoli, which wiped out a ruling class that would have been capable of making its voice heard, starting with the then Foreign Minister De Michelis.

Giuseppe Severini, President of the Section of the Council of State, reports in his contribution on the experience he had in the 1990s when he was part of working groups that had to set up relations between Rome and newly independent Croatia: he worked closely with the late Lucio Toth, obtained advantageous conditions for the benefit of the Italian minority in Croatia (on paper, since they had yet to be fully implemented by Zagreb), but could do nothing about the renegotiation of borders; the eminent jurist points out that the position taken by recently reunified Germany, which had just officially redefined its eastern border with Poland and did not intend to reopen border disputes in Europe, was decisive.

This valuable collection of high-level essays is completed by the writing of Prof. Davide Rossi, who briefly but effectively reviews over half a century of history of the Eastern Adriatic, including treaties, bipolar conflicts and Yugoslav strategies that were much more effective and assertive than the Italian ones.

Lorenzo Salimbeni – 10/11/2021 
Source: Adriatic Coordination