The conference “Before and after the Treaty of Osimo: reflections” was held by the Coordinamento Adriatico association on Saturday 6 April in the town in the Marche region where in 1975 Italy and Yugoslavia concluded a bilateral negotiation that lasted over twenty years, but was concluded outside the usual diplomatic channels and with methods that are still being discussed today. Renzo Codarin (president of the National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia), David Di Paoli Paulovich (president of the Association of Istrian Communities), Franco Luxardo (president of the Association of Italian Dalmatians in the World – Free Municipality of Zara in Exile), and Antonio Ballarin (president of the Federation of Associations of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian Exiles) were present in the audience, as well as a delegation of the local Julian-Dalmatian community and other leaders and researchers of the associations of the Adriatic diaspora.

Introducing the meeting, Prof. Giuseppe de Vergottini, president of Coordinamento Adriatico, recalled the defeatist attitude with which the Italian governments approached the negotiations on the fate of the never-established Free Territory of Trieste, whose Zone A (Trieste) had been administered by Italy since 1954 and B (Koper and Buje) by Yugoslavia, despite a 1964 ruling by the Constitutional Court deeming that Italian sovereignty over both zones had never ceased.

Professor Ida Caracciolo (University of Campania) retraced the process by which Italy bargained with Belgrade over the fate of the goods abandoned by Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles: although protected by the Peace Treaty, they were used by Rome to pay war reparations to the regime of Josip Broz “Tito” and the compensation to the legitimate owners was not adequate. Without forgetting that with regard to the goods abandoned in Zone B of the FTT, the successor states of Yugoslavia, Slovenia and Croatia, postponed the timing and methods of compensation without Italy expressing its point of view.

Professor Attila Tanzi (University of Bologna) expanded on these issues, noting how Italy, in the post-war period, had come to lump-sum solutions with reference to assets abandoned by its citizens in former colonies and even in Tunisia, while with the neighbouring communist state full compensation did not materialise, most likely due to a round trip: credits and debts were offset, leaving those who saw their houses, lands and businesses nationalised unsatisfied.

An interesting historical excursus was provided by Prof. Igor Pellicciari (University of Urbino), who highlighted how the dissolution of Yugoslavia in the 1990s corresponded in Italy, due to the Clean Hands scandal, with a change in the ruling class, which was no longer interested in foreign policy, but only in domestic policy. After Gianni De Michelis, in short, Italy was unable to capitalize on the commercial and cultural power it exercises in the Balkan world, where the young republics of Ljubljana and Zagreb wanted to demonstrate their authority.

In the conclusions of the conference, Giuseppe Severini, president of the Fifth Section of the Council of State, acutely noted how the Treaty of Osimo represented the final stage of a century-long journey and its renegotiation, once Yugoslavia had imploded, was made impossible by the interference of reunified Germany which, once its border with Poland had been officially defined, had closed the doors to border revisions in Central-Eastern Europe which had emerged from Soviet domination.

Davide Rossi (University of Trieste), finally presented the volume “Quarant'anni da Osimo” (Wolter Kluwer – Cedam, Milan – Padua 2018), which collects the proceedings of the conference organized by Coordinamento Adriatico at the Italian Society for International Organization and other contributions that better outline the historical, political and legal profile of the treaty with which Italy renounced its legitimate claims to a strip of Istria in exchange for nothing concrete.

Lorenzo Salimbeni