The conference "Forty Years After Osimo. The Italo-Yugoslav Treaty of November 10, 1975," organized in January 2016 by the Adriatic Coordination Association at the prestigious headquarters of the Italian Society for International Organization, already featured high-caliber speakers, heralding an absolutely valuable volume of proceedings. But the curation by Davide Lo Presti and Davide Rossi has further enhanced publication no. 48 of the Italian Center for Research Development, a series directed by Professor Giuseppe de Vergottini. The core of the volume, published by the prestigious Wolters Kluwer publishing house, comprises the papers presented at the time and is strengthened by additional in-depth essays that more fully outline the historical, legal, and political implications of the controversial drafting and ratification of the Treaty of Osimo.

In “From the 1954 Memorandum to Osimo,” Giuseppe Parlato outlines the path taken by the Italian ruling class to resolve the border issue with Yugoslavia. On October 26, 1954, Zones A and B of the never-formed Free Territory of Trieste had passed under Italian and Yugoslav civil administration respectively. Sovereignty still remained to be defined, and so the centrist governments maintained a mental reservation about being able to claim the districts of Koper and Buje. Bound by the Atlantic Alliance, Italian foreign policy rarely followed the channels of national interests and instead appeared to be a continuation of internal political dialectics in other areas. Thus, the center-left phase and Aldo Moro's attentions towards the PCI led to a new attitude towards Tito's dictatorship, whose socialist model of economic co-management and autonomy from Moscow won support among the Italian left, so much so that it led to a solution more favorable to Belgrade than to Rome. "National Interest and Political Disinterest" is the title of Giuseppe de Vergottini's essay , which provides a merciless examination of the Foreign Ministry's failures to deploy Italy's greatest influence in negotiations with Belgrade, demonstrating in particular its resignation on the issue of sovereignty: challenging Cammarata's theory of "suspended sovereignty" seemed too steeped in national "sacred egoism" in the era of the Helsinki Conference and Cold War détente. But the treaty signed on November 10, 1975, and finalized by the 1983 Rome Agreement regarding compensation for property abandoned by exiles in Zone B, could be called into question by the dissolution of Yugoslavia (the moment easily predicted and long-awaited by Osimo's detractors), in a confrontation with its successor states, Slovenia and Croatia. The Leanza Commission, established in 2001 at the request of Foreign Minister Renato Ruggiero and in collaboration with FederEsuli, did not have an easy life, however, and ultimately adopted the line unilaterally imposed by Slovenia and Croatia, which divided the remaining debt that Belgrade had only just begun to repay in the early 1990s, without any room for renegotiation. Professor Umberto Leanza himself describes in his speech the brief and fruitless experience of the commission he chaired. Economic and border details, property protection, and citizenship are addressed in the fourth and final essay, also presented at the conference: "A Legal Rereading of the Osimo Agreements Forty Years After Their Conclusion." The work of Professor Ida Caracciolo , it focuses, among other things, on the unusual definition of the maritime border, set according to unusual criteria that conflicted with international law, typically customary, and benefited Yugoslavia, giving a new impetus to the port development of Koper to the detriment of Trieste.

Francesco Leopardi Dittaiuti (a descendant of the poet from Recanati) briefly recalls how the family villa in Osimo was temporarily requisitioned to sign the treaty itself—far from controversy; "Italy Closes and Its Borders Wet" is an excursus by Davide Rossi and Giorgio Federico Siboni on the history of Italy's eastern border; "Trieste Against the Osimanti " by Lorenzo Salimbeni describes the protests of Istrian exiles and the Julian capital against this treaty imposed from above; while Maria Ballarin Salvatori takes stock of "The Eastern Border in History Teaching," a wound that has only recently been partially healed. The volume is rounded out with extensive and detailed legal contributions: Tiziano Sošić focuses on the “Categories of stolen assets and prospects for legal protection within the legal system of the Republic of Croatia,” Davide Lo Presti outlines “Prospects for legal protection of the rights of exiles and their heirs,” and finally, Mattia Magrassi presents a “Review of case law: compensation actions undertaken by exiles against the Italian state.”

Davide Lo Presti – Davide Rossi (edited by), Forty Years from Osimo , Wolters Kluwer – Cedam, Milan 2018, 246 pp.