FRANCE: French protesters will cut France off from Italy on Good Friday, in a powerful symbolic illustration of the deteriorating relations between the two countries. Residents of towns near the border will block the tunnel at Fréjus to show their anger at air and noise pollution from traffic through the Alps. Except for the Côte d'Azur, Fréjus has been the only land route between the two countries for three years.
The main grievance between Paris and Rome is the continuing partial closure of the Mont Blanc tunnel, which was shut down after a fire claimed the lives of 39 people in March 1999.
But the tunnel quarrel coincides with cultural, judiciary, commercial and political misunderstandings that have brought ties between the two countries to their lowest point in a decade.
Italy has long accused France of delaying the reopening of the Mont Blanc tunnel - originally scheduled for last September - for domestic political reasons. Cars have been allowed to use the tunnel since March 9th and it was supposed to have been accessible to all traffic two weeks later.
When the French Transport Minister, Mr Jean-Claude Gayssot, announced last week that only buses and lorries weighing less than 19 tonnes would be allowed through, France's Green presidential candidate, Mr Noel Mamère applauded the decision as a "first victory".
But the Italian Transport Minister, Mr Pietro Lunardi, was furious. Mr Lunardi took his case before the European Commission yesterday and the Commission said that if France cannot justify the restrictions, Paris risks being condemned by the EU for denying freedom of movement. Prime Minister Lionel Jospin would rather incur the wrath of Brussels than lose the presidential election. Today's Council of European Transport Ministers should be a lively affair.
The French and Italian culture ministries are also at war. The French Socialist Culture Minister, Ms Catherine Tasca, started the battle when she refused to open the French salon du livre with the right-wing Italian Prime Minister Mr Silvio Berlusconi.
Mr Berlusconi dispatched two junior ministers to Paris last Thursday, but they were greeted at the book fair by protesters shouting "Shame", "Liberate Italy" and "Berlusconi is dangerous".
One of the ministers, Mr Vittorio Sgarbi, blamed Ms Tasca for the protest saying: "I have never seen a minister receive an official delegation through the service entrance. She was afraid to receive us in front of the protesters."
Mr Sgarbi said that France was not a democratic country and accused Ms Tasca's emigrant father Angelo, a founder of the Italian Communist Party, of having collaborated with the second World War Vichy government. Thereupon, the Italian delegation packed its bags and left for home.
Italy is the guest of honour at the book fair, and this prompted headlines saying "Divorce Italian Style" and "Italy and France: the End of a Love Story?" in Le Figaro. "After five centuries of such close ties ... writers and artists on both sides of the Alps have nothing more to say to each other," the academician Jean-Marie Rouart moaned. He diagnosed a "cultural void" having nothing to do with politics. But the left-wing Le Monde published eight pages by Italian intellectuals criticising the Berlusconi government.
In the wake of the assassination of the economist Mr Marco Biagi, the Italian Justice Minister, Mr Roberto Castelli, a member of Mr Umberto Bossi's xenophobe, anti-European Northern League, joined in, accusing France of "harbouring members of the Italian Red Brigades whom they refuse to extradite".
