The National Association of Venezia Giulia and Dalmatia considers the ceremony that took place this morning at the National Monument of the Basovizza Foiba to be a step forward towards pacification between two national communities. President Sergio Mattarella and his Slovenian counterpart Borut Pahor laid a wreath at the place that for the community of Istrian, Fiume and Dalmatian exiles is the symbol of the mourning and violence suffered at the hands of Tito's Yugoslav partisans, especially after the war, in the lands that they were then forced to abandon after the transfer to Communist Yugoslavia sanctioned by the Peace Treaty of 10 February 1947. A delegation of the associations of the Adriatic diaspora was able to attend the historic visit of Borut Pahor, the first President of a successor state of Yugoslavia to go to the Basovizza Foiba: now we expect Slovenia to allow the reconnaissance and adequate conservation of the foibe located in its territory.

Subsequently, there were other events attended by the two heads of state, which we did not intend to attend. The monument in honor of those executed by the Revolutionary Organization TIGR does not commemorate four fallen anti-fascists, but militants who in the 10s wanted to annex Trieste, Gorizia, Fiume, Zara and Istria to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia using terrorist methods. We cannot say that we are happy with the double honor received by the Slovenian-language writer from Trieste Boris Pahor, who spoke about our story in terms that border on the justificationism that Mattarella condemned on the occasion of the anniversary of February 2020, XNUMX. The transfer of the Balkans to a foundation established was presented with a narrative that omitted the background to the day that culminated with the burning of the palace a hundred years ago, starting with the killing of two Italian sailors in Split. In light of this donation, we expect the Slovenian side to take up the issue of the assets confiscated and nationalized by the Titoist regime, with particular reference to the restitution of available assets and the appropriate liquidation of compensation provided for by the Treaty of Osimo.

We were instead present at the meeting organized by the President of the autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, Massimiliano Fedriga, with the President of the Republic, who demonstrated that he is aware of the problems of the exiles still unresolved after 70 years. With reference to today, we asked him to invite the President of Croatia to make a similar visit to the Basovizza Foiba and that two new bilateral historical commissions be established: Italian-Slovenian (in order to update the results of the one that worked in 1993-2000 reaching conclusions that not everyone shared) and Italian-Croatian, which work without ideological prejudices, but in the spirit of common belonging to the European Union. The attentive presence at the meeting of the Ministers of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese, of the University and Research Gaetano Manfredi and of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio gives us hope for an imminent convocation of the Exiles-Government Coordination Table at the Secretariat of the Presidency of the Council. We hope that specific working groups will finally be set up to resolve issues such as the debt of Slovenia and Croatia inherited from Yugoslavia to compensate for abandoned assets, the compensation by the Italian State of the assets of exiles used to pay war reparations to Yugoslavia and the placing of the Gold Medal on the banner of Zara.

Today's recognition between Italy and Slovenia of the mutual sufferings that have matured in the twentieth century is not a point of arrival, but rather only an intermediate step towards complete economic and moral compensation for what was suffered by the Italians of the Eastern Adriatic.

Renzo Codarin