30 September 2026
Alice Lucchini
30 Years of the No TAV Movement in Italy: Who Decides the Future of the Valley?
“Chi lancia bombe carta, incendia mezzi dello Stato e aggredisce le Forze dell’Ordine non sta difendendo un’idea” (“Those who throw firecrackers, set state vehicles on fire and assault law enforcement officers are not defending an idea”).
With these words, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described the acts of violence linked to protests against the Turin–Lyon railway as an “attack on the State.” As every summer, the No TAV movement is once again at the center of public debate, and Meloni’s statement has only raised new questions about the political issues surrounding this now historic major public infrastructure project.
For over thirty years, the Turin–Lyon high-speed rail project has sparked debates amongst residents, institutions, and public opinion, turning an Alpine valley into one of the main arenas of Italy’s political conflict over so-called “major infrastructure projects.” On one side are multiple different Italian and French governments, the European Union, and the companies responsible for the site’s construction, all supporting the expansion of the railway system across the Alps. On the other side, is the No TAV Movement, now supported by activists from all over the world, which continues to argue that the project is economically disproportionate, environmentally damaging, and, above all, unnecessary in light of the territory’s actual needs.
Born between the late 1980s and early 1990s, the movement has gradually moved beyond the boundaries of a local protest. No TAV is not simply a movement opposed to the construction of a railway: it has become a laboratory for territorial, environmental, and political mobilization, built around the defense of the Susa Valley and the opposition to a development model based on major infrastructure projects.
The environmental issue is precisely one of the central elements of the protest. The construction of the new railway line involves excavating the gigantic Monte Cenisio base tunnel, as well as a series of ancillary works that profoundly alter — and damage — the territory. TELT, the Italian-French company responsible for constructing the cross-border section, emphasizes its monitoring of water resources and states that has mapped hundreds of water points in the area affected by the works. Yet the very fact that such extensive environmental monitoring is necessary illustrates, at least in part, the scale of the transformation taking place in the territory.
There is also the important issue of the enormous public expenditure involved in such a project. The most recent figure concerns the cross-border section of the Turin–Lyon line, which includes the gigantic Monte Cenisio base tunnel: according to TELT, the overall cost of the project has risen from the €8.6 billion forecast in the 2015 final design to the current €11.1 billion, with completion of the construction works expected in 2033.
According to the company, the increase is mainly linked to rising construction costs, the effects of the pandemic, and the greater complexity of the works.
The figure becomes even more significant when compared with the estimate by the European Court of Auditors. In its report published in 2026 on major European infrastructure projects, the Court puts the estimated cost of the Lyon–Turin rail connection at approximately €11.8 billion, based on 2019 prices, representing a 127% increase compared with the initial estimate used as a reference.
A substantial portion of the funding comes from the European Union. In 2025, the European Commission established that the base tunnel could benefit from European co-financing of up to 55%, while the remaining costs of the cross-border section are divided with 57.9% borne by Italy and 42.1% by France, after deducting the European contribution and the portion financed through toll revenues.
This means that talking about “European money” as though it was an external and free resource is rather misleading: the project is financed through a combination of European funds and national public resources.
The question raised by the No TAV Movement therefore inevitably becomes a question about public spending priorities as well: why allocate such a huge amount of resources to a new railway infrastructure project when Italy’s transport system still faces enormous problems with maintenance, safety, and accessibility?
And it is precisely from this that the political conflict between governing elites and No TAV activists arises. The activists courageously pursue an alternative vision and steadily and fiercely defend their territory.
Indeed, the construction sites in the Susa Valley have for years been protected by a massive presence of law enforcement personnel. In 2021, according to documents from the State Attorney’s Office cited during the trial of several activists, more than 260,000 police officers, Carabinieri, and members of the Guardia di Finanza were deployed in total to secure the construction sites, with a daily average of more than 700 personnel.
Clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement forces have by now become an almost recurring feature of the history of the TAV. Yet reducing the movement to its most confrontational component means ignoring a fundamental part of its history. Academic research into mobilizations against the TAV and other major infrastructure projects has highlighted how the committees did not limit themselves to saying “no,” but instead developed alternative forms of political participation, putting forward proposals and demanding a direct role for local communities in decisions concerning their own territory.
The point, then, is not simply whether the TAV is useful or useless, but rather who has the right to decide.
The history of the Susa Valley challenges a very specific conception of development: the idea that major infrastructure projects automatically represent progress, economic growth, and modernization. But a project can be technologically advanced while simultaneously being politically controversial. It can promise to reduce road traffic while also involving decades of construction, land consumption, and an enormous investment of public resources.
The committees of the Susa Valley have built a political and social network capable of connecting the defense of the territory with broader issues: democratic participation, the management of common goods, the development model, and the right of communities to have a say in decisions affecting the places where they live.
No TAV has managed to survive because it has never been merely a protest against a construction site. It has become a political community. And perhaps that is precisely why it continues to represent a problem for institutions. A movement can be suppressed through force, through endless legal proceedings, or through public delegitimization. But if people continue to organize, meet, and pass the memory of the protest on to new generations, the conflict cannot simply disappear.
Twenty years after the events in Venaus, the railway is still not complete: the works are repeatedly interrupted and postponed, and the political mobilization continues. This does not automatically mean that the No TAV Movement is right on every issue, nor that every form of protest is legitimate. It does, however, mean that a strategy based simply on portraying the conflict as one between a “democratic State” and a “violent minority” is not sufficient to explain what is happening in the Susa Valley.
When a state has to deploy hundreds of officers to protect a construction site, use public resources to secure it, and confront a movement that has resisted for more than thirty years, are we still dealing with a simple matter of public order?
Or are we facing a political conflict that we have never truly managed to resolve?