One of the most developed territories in Italy and with the greatest political autonomy (South Tyrol, Südtirol in German, located in the Trentino-Alto Adige region) has sparked a small, rather artificial and very minority controversy, but one that shows how raw nationalist sensitivities are. The German radical right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) organized a gathering in the federal Parliament to mark the eightieth anniversary of the 1946 Agreement, and one of the participants, Otto Mahlknecht, a member of a small ultra secessionist party from South Tyrol (Die Freiheitlichen, the Freedom Party), announced his intervention with a map in which the territory appeared detached from Italy, as if it were an independent state. He denied that he had requested help from AfD to advance his project and, for its part, the German far right asserted that they did not promote the secession of South Tyrol.
Nevertheless, the collaboration between AfD and the South Tyrolean ultras is close, and thus, for example, the spokesperson for the youth wing of Süd-Tiroler Freiheit, Melanie Mair, stated in a meeting with the youths of the German far right that the terrorists from their region from the 1950s to the 1980s had been “fighters for freedom” and that, in any case, the mixing of German-speaking and Italian-speaking people was completely inadvisable, in line with the typical theses of ethnic nationalism.
The matter is obviously minor, but it has caused a small earthquake in Giorgia Meloni’s government: Antonio Tajani (Foreign Minister of Forza Italia) considered it a serious incident and the issue was particularly uncomfortable for Roberto Vannacci (Futuro Nazionale) and Matteo Salvini (Lega), both zealous guardians of the sacrosanct national territorial integrity: the former shares a group in the European Parliament with AfD, in Europe of the Sovereign Nations (ESN), led by the German radicals, and the latter enthusiastically congratulated the German ultras on their crushing electoral result in Saxony-Anhalt. Vannacci criticized Salvini by reminding him that the Lega had supported the expulsion of AfD from the Identity and Democracy group two years earlier, while Meloni has kept a low profile on the matter.
“The matter is obviously minor, but it has provoked a small earthquake in the government of Giorgia Meloni”
Undoubtedly, it is worth making a brief historical excursus: South Tyrol was incorporated into Italy in 1920, with no regard for the principle of national self-determination defended by Woodrow Wilson. Fascism aimed to denationalize the German speakers and forcibly convert them into Italians, with a ban on education in German, strong repression, and Italianization of personal and geographic names. Benito Mussolini favored a massive arrival of Italians to the region, and, interestingly, Adolf Hitler respected the border — though he did not like it — because he wanted Italy as an ally. The Nazi proposal, embodied in a 1939 agreement following the Anschluss of Austria, was to receive in the Reich the German-speaking South Tyroleans who wished to do so (the majority chose to do so, although only a portion emigrated). After Liberation in 1945, the Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP) was founded in the region, which claimed self-determination to rejoin Austria, but the Allies rejected it and merely demanded that the Italian authorities respect the rights of the German speakers. The 1946 Agreement ( Alcide De Gasperi, Prime Minister of Italy, and Karl Gruber, Austrian Foreign Minister) was a compensation for the brutal fascist Italianization of the dictatorship: the borders of 1919 were not modified, but a settlement was accepted by Italy to grant wide linguistic and cultural rights to the German-speaking people of South Tyrol.
With the Constitution of the democratic Republic, Trentino-Alto Adige became one of the five special regions of the country, with broad autonomous powers in numerous areas (an autonomy that is also dual, since the two provinces, Trento and Bolzano/Bozen, are autonomous from each other within the region). The entire territory, once among the most underdeveloped, is today the richest in Italy, and in South Tyrol there live about 500,000 inhabitants, 68.6% belonging to the German-speaking group, 27% to the Italian-speaking one, and 4.4% to the Ladin-speaking group. The region has had two autonomy statutes, the first in 1948 by constitutional law and the second in 1972, by the same procedure, with recognition of greater self-government. This was possible for two reasons: 1) to provide a political response and not merely repressive measures to the episodes of terrorism carried out by ultra secessionist organizations, and 2) to win the support of the region’s major party, the SVP. The 1969 Agreement (Il Pacchetto) was signed by Aldo Moro and Kurt Waldheim, both foreign ministers of Italy and Austria, respectively, and accepted by the national parliaments of the two countries and, as a result, the new Statute that significantly expanded self-government was approved.
Its implementation was laborious and slow and, in fact, it did not culminate until 1992 and only then did the SVP declare that all the signed agreements had been fully fulfilled. Moreover, Austria’s entry into the European Union in 1995 and into the Schengen area in 1997 facilitated the smoothness of relations and the 2001 constitutional reform in Italy further strengthened the self-government of the two regional provinces. Therefore, despite ups and downs, the overall trend has always been cooperation and negotiation, aside from the violent episodes between the 1950s and 1980s that were even discussed at the UN at Austria’s request, which recommended Italy to negotiate (this backdrop is well described in Francesca Melandri’s excellent novel Eva dorme).
“Despite ups and downs, the general trend has always been cooperation and negotiation, regardless of the violent episodes between the fifties and eighties”
The political key to the territory’s stability lies in the SVP, a formidable catch-all party oriented toward the center-right (it is a member of the European People’s Party), whose main objective has always been to deepen self-government without pursuing secession. The SVP has suffered some schisms, both on its left (social-democratic nationalists) and on its right (ultras), being fairly populist, but cohesive due to its aim of always being the leading party and governing the territory. It is a party that has swung from an impressive 67% of the vote (1948) to the current 35%-40%. During the First Republic, the SVP used to pact with the Christian Democracy and, at times, with the Socialists, and in the Second Republic (from 1994) it has fluctuated between the two great blocs, sometimes with the center-right and other times with the center-left. Among other factors, the SVP’s hegemony rested on the charisma of an exceptional leader, Silvius Magnago (governed the territory from 1960 to 1989, for more than 28 consecutive years, and led the party from 1957 to 1991) and honorary president until his death in 2010 at the age of 96. In short, the South Tyrol question is today effectively resolved and the region’s German-speaking population overwhelmingly accepts being Italian citizens while feeling linked to the Germanic linguistic and cultural world, which is why this conflict has been a storm in a teacup that only interested a very minority ultra group in the area.
