LUGANO – A maritime republic without access to the sea. Switzerland, despite being synonymous with banks, clocks and splendid alpine landscapes, has a respectable merchant fleet, with as many as 49 ships flying the red-and-red flag. A merchant fleet that today is in bad shape. “We are talking about a legacy of the Second World War,” explains economist Remigio Ratti, an expert in the field of transport and a lecturer at the University of Italian Switzerland in Lugano, to Repubblica. “In fact, it is necessary to go back to 1941, when the supply from the north was closed and the Italian ports, in particular Genoa, saved Swiss import-export”.

In short, a real national security issue. It must be said, however, that since the outbreak of the 2008 financial crisis, at the origin of the over-capacity of the maritime transport system, the maritime ambitions of the Confederation have cost, at the public purse, the equivalent of one billion euros in sureties. And the costs continue if one thinks that, to come to the rescue of two shipowners, forced to sell 13 ships, Bern must, again, put its hand to the wallet, for just under 200 million euros. “In my opinion – says Remigio Ratti – there is no more space and reason to continue with its own fleet for national security. For example, the new silk roads launched by China, with the One Belt One Road vision, offer other possibilities, opening up more Euro-Asian land routes to traffic “.

However, in recent days, the Swiss Parliament has reiterated the need to continue financing the merchant navy as a “guarantee of supply for the country. As if the question of national security, invoked for decades, had become, in some cases, an alibi for setting up, in Switzerland, perhaps in Geneva, a shipping activity, exactly as it happens with companies specialized in the trading of raw materials. Also because, we know that operating in Switzerland is fiscally an asset. “Geneva is able to offer framework conditions compatible with global institutional rules – observes the teacher – and, above all, a series of essential services and specialist human skills such that we cannot speak of a single factor of attractiveness. Let us remember – concludes Ratti – that, precisely in Geneva, Alinghi was born, the emblem of a winning country that, thanks to Ernesto Bertarelli, a Swiss passport but Italian by origin, brought the America’s Cup of Sailing to Europe for the first time. If we want the merchant marine is the other side of this reality “.