FROM SIGONELLA TO THE PORT OF TRIESTE: WHEN ITALY BREACHES ALLIANCES AND TREATIES.
Analysis by Paolo G. Parovel, English version by Silvia Verdoljak
Trieste, 16 April 2026 – In recent weeks, the historical, political unreliability of the Italian Governments in matters of military alliances and compliance with international Treaties has received two clamorous confirmations.
On March 28th, the Meloni Government denied the United States the use of its Sigonella airbase without warning in the war effort to liberate the people of Iran and the Middle East from the savagery and nuclear threats of the terrorist Ayatollah regime.
The Craxi Government had already done something similar in 1985, when it allowed the escape of a Palestinian terrorist leader, Abu Abbas, and of his accomplices in the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro and in the murder of the elderly, wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer.
And the consequence of that betrayal was the liquidation, from 1992, of the entire Italian corrupt political system of the time, starting from Craxi’s own nationalistic socialist party.
On April 7th, under strong pressure from the Meloni Government through the State’s Legal Service (Avvocatura dello Stato), the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation denied the effectiveness of two Treaties in force with the United States.
These are the main, strategically relevant Treaties regarding the present-day Free Territory of Trieste – which has bordered Italy since 1947 and Slovenia since 1992 – and its international Free Port.
The refusal to recognize the validity of those Treaties is a form of betrayal different from the military one that occurred in Sigonella, however, it is no less destabilizing.
Indeed, it harms the free flow of international trade, and it favors the aggressive economic expansion of Communist China in the Mediterranean and toward Central Europe.
And this is happening because the unreliability of the Italian Governments toward the United States is not occasional but structural.
Post-war Italy has had 67 Governments in 78 years, all of which were influenced by right- or left-wing nationalistic anti-American ideologies.
The two betrayed Treaties about Trieste.
The main Treaties about Trieste that were betrayed are two.
The first is the multilateral Treaty of Peace with Italy of 10 February 1947.
That Treaty has established and recognized the Free Territory of Trieste as a sovereign State with an international Free Port as its State corporation, to serve the ships and freight of all States, without discrimination.
The Treaty, which came into force on September 15th, 1947, therefore ended (art. 21) the sovereignty previously exercised by Italy over Trieste.
Italian sovereignty over Trieste only lasted 27 years, from 1920 to 1947, after 536 years of Austrian sovereignty, from 1382 to 1918.
The second treaty is the quadrilateral Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Free Territory of Trieste, signed in London on 5 October 1954, as an additional instrument to the Peace Treaty.
With this MoU, the United States and the United Kingdom have sub-entrusted the temporary civil administration of the present-day Free Territory of Trieste to the Italian Government (not to the Italian State).
Under the 1954 MoU, the Italian Government has therefore committed to fulfill all obligations deriving from that sub-mandate.
These obligations include the provisional exercise of legislative authority, of jurisdiction, and of the representation of the Free Territory of Trieste in foreign relations, as well as the commitment to maintain the international Free Port in accordance with the pertinent provisions of the Treaty of Peace.
The Italian Government should therefore fulfill these obligations using public officers of the Italian State, who, in that capacity, should represent the Free Territory of Trieste instead.
The military defense of the Free Territory’s neutrality was instead entrusted to NATO with separate acts.
The 1947 Treaty of Peace and the 1954 MoU are fully implemented within the Italian State’s legal system through legislation in force.
Since those laws implement international obligations, under the Italian Constitution, they prevail over all Italian domestic laws in force, as well as on international agreements with an inferior rank in the hierarchy of the sources of law, as is the 1975 bilateral Italian-Yugoslav Treaty of Osimo.
The political simulation of Italian sovereignty.
During the Cold War, the decades-long Soviet occupation of Central Europe significantly reduced the economic and strategic value of the Free Territory of Trieste and of its international Free Port for international trade.
At the same time, the sub-administering Italian Governments took advantage of this to breach both the Peace Treaty and the MoU by simulating that Trieste and its international Free Port had remained under the sovereignty of the Italian State.
This is a political simulation, because no Italian Government ever dared to formally denounce the Treaty of Peace or the Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Free Territory of Trieste.
Still, with this political simulation, the Italian Governments are effectively breaching international law, the civil, economic, and fiscal rights of the citizens of the sub-administered Free Territory and of their enterprises, the rights of all States and their enterprises over its international Free Port, and the very Constitution of the Italian Republic.
No taxation without representation.
With its earliest measures, the Italian sub-administration has also violated the fundamental democratic principle of America’s independence: no taxation without representation.
It did so by reserving voting rights to Italian citizens, stripping them away from the citizens of the Free Territory of Trieste, while simultaneously subjecting them to the taxation of the Italian State, which is three to four times more burdensome than Trieste’s legitimate taxation.
Illegitimate EU constraints.
Furthermore, the sub-administering Italian Governments also subject the Free Territory of Trieste to the legal and customary constraints of the European Union, in clear violation of the prohibition set at art. 26.4 of Annex VI to the Treaty of Peace.
This means it is also illegitimate to treat the international and the customary ports of Trieste as EU ports.
The practical effects of those violations.
The practical effects of all those violations have been, and remain, an appalling economic and demographic decline in the Free Territory of Trieste, which under the Italian provisional administration went from 296,000 inhabitants to 227,840 facing increasing levels of poverty, and the international Free Port is nearly paralyzed, while the nearby Slovenian port of Koper is constantly expanding.
Extraordinary levels of corruption.
This serious crisis is exacerbated by the high levels of corruption within the local political system, administrative bodies, and judiciary.
Indeed, the local system of government is conditioned by Italian nationalistic lobbies that also exercise political control over the most influential mass media.
Latest developments.
The Cold War has been over for decades, with the end of the Soviet Union and the retreat of its troops from Central Europe.
The end of the Cold War has therefore restored the original, extraordinary economic and strategic importance of both the Free Territory of Trieste and its international Free Port for the freedom of global trade.
And this means that the problem of rights violations by the Italian sub-administration now affects all States and all enterprises that have an interest in freely using the international Free Port of Trieste.
This is also confirmed by the fact that last year our analyses on the subject, published online in English and in Italian, attracted more than one million readers, particularly from the United States of America, Singapore, Italy, Denmark, Russia, China, the Netherlands, Israel, Hong Kong, Brazil, Morocco, South Africa, and Germany.
New strategic risks.
The sub-administering Italian Governments, however, have continued to illegally subject Trieste to the simulation of Italian sovereignty and to Italian taxation.
At the same time, they caused new situations of strategic risk exploiting the simulation of Italian sovereignty over Trieste to conclude illegitimate port agreements with the Ayatollah regime in Iran (2016), with Maduro’s Venezuela (2019), and, since 2019, with Communist China.
Finally, the sub-administering Italian Governments have allowed the local system of corruption to plan an even more harmful, colossal fraud that conceals an unprecedented strategic risk, providing it full political and legal coverage.
The fraud has two main operational phases.
The first phase of the fraud consists in deactivating one of the two big, permanent free zones of the international Free Port of Trieste, its Northern Free Port, also called “porto vecchio” (old port).
The second phase consists in allowing a housing and building speculation in those 75 hectares of port area, with a special clause.
The special clause would consist in splitting the area to sell and re-sell the new plots to any customer on the ordinary real estate market, along with Italian free port concessions.
Evidently, the most favored buyers would be state-run companies from Communist China, or their Italian, European, and international intermediaries.
The Agency for the legal defense.
The defense of the Free Territory of Trieste as a subject of international law however was hampered by the fact that after becoming responsible for it under the 1954 sub-mandate of temporary civil administration, the Italian Government has surreptitiously deactivated it.
For this reason, in 2015 a relevant number of citizens, residents, and enterprises from Trieste and other affected subjects established the International Provisional Representative of the Free Territory of Trieste – I.P.R. F.T.T., an Agency exercising provisional representation of the State, acting upon delegations and legal mandates in defense of the violated rights before any authority.
The civil lawsuits against the Italian Government.
Acting as a subject of international law, the I.P.R. F.T.T. brought proceedings against the Italian Government and certain bodies responsible for the sub-administration of Trieste, seeking declaratory judgment on the validity and effect of the violated Treaties and to bring those violations to an end.
For this purpose, the I.P.R. F.T.T. initiated, with the support of hundreds of citizens, three civil lawsuits.
Two of those lawsuits are in matters of taxation, a very relevant matter for the economic interests of natural and legal persons.
The third lawsuit however is about the management of the international Free Port, which, for the aforementioned reasons, does also have a significant strategic relevance.
All three lawsuits were initiated before the Italian judges of first and second instance, as well as before the Supreme Court of Cassation, which are in charge of exercising the jurisdiction of the Free Territory of Trieste on behalf of the sub-administering Government.
The politically-motivated reaction of the Italian judges.
The reaction of those judges of the Italian sub-administration has been manifestly political.
Indeed, they acted as a tool of judicial repression of the Italian State against anyone questioning the simulation of Italian sovereignty over Trieste.
And with this behavior they have simultaneously violated the truth, their official duties, and also the fundamental principles of justice and of the rule of law.
Indeed, so far all those judges have refused to assess the legal force of those Treaties and to put an end to their violation by falsely claiming they lack jurisdiction in the matter.
A declaration of absolute lack of jurisdiction therefore precluded any ruling on the merits and required costs of litigation to be offset between the parties.
Instead, all those judges added to their declarations of absolute lack of jurisdiction the false political claims that those Treaties are no longer in force, that Trieste is under Italian sovereignty, and that the Free Territory does not exist, and never existed.
And on the premise of those false and illegitimate claims, they scandalously ordered the claimants to pay the full costs of litigation as a punishment for exercising the right to seek and obtain the assessment and the enforcement of laws in force.
The strategic lawsuit about the international Free Port.
The strategic lawsuit regarding the international Free Port had been assigned to the First Section of the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation.
The Court attempted to reject the case by proposing the claimants to accept an illegitimate decision without discussion, under threat, in case of refusal, to order them to pay increased court fees and to hold the hearing in chambers, which means behind closed doors and without the parties.
The I.P.R. F.T.T. rejected that blackmail, confident in its own good right and in three new, decisive facts.
First of all, the Joint Sections of the same Supreme Court had demolished the false thesis of the lack of jurisdiction with a decision that is binding for all other judges (LINK).
Second, the US Department of State had officially confirmed the legal force of the 1947 Treaty of Peace with Italy and of the 1954 Memorandum of Understanding regarding the Free Territory of Trieste.
Third and final, the anticipation of the First section’s final, negative decision constituted a breach of the European Union’s provisions on fair trial, therefore obligating the Italian Court of Cassation to seek a preliminary ruling on the matter from the Court of Justice of the European Union – CJEU.
Those three decisive, incoming facts have been promptly notified to the Court with the legally required final brief, which we are publishing here for the sake of clarity: (LINK).
A new, more scandalous judgment.
The Court held the hearing in chambers on December 16th, 2025, and had quite a hard time making a decision, the way it may happen when matters of justice are overshadowed by matters of State.
Indeed, according to unverified information, the discussion in chambers lasted beyond 10 hours, and the case file was then brought outside the courtroom in a locked container, only to be transferred elsewhere under guard some days later.
What is certain is that for the following 112 days the Court of Cassation only provided the information that a decision had been made in that one hearing, but without revealing if the result was positive or negative, however, the judgment had not been lodged yet.
And this is also a practice that goes against the rule of law, because it doesn’t guarantee that the judgment is actually the decision taken at the end of the discussion in chambers, as it may be one that was later revised, especially when there are relevant political and State interests at play.
Even more so, because once the judgment was revealed it was evident that drafting it did in no way require a 112-day wait.
Indeed, the Court decided to slightly retouch its proposed, unfair negative decision aggravated with punitive court fees, the one the I.P.R. F.T.T., had promptly rejected.
And, in order to do so, it has completely avoided looking into the subsequent intervening legal facts which made the reiteration of that negative decision and punitive court fees impossible.
Finally, the date in which the judgment was filed coincides with the timing of a procedural phase of the real estate fraud in the “old port”, which a positive judgment, or a further delay, may have hampered.
Considering the subject matter and the speculative interests at play, such a suspicion is legitimate, if not unavoidable.
A peculiar network of corruption.
What remains is the awareness of a peculiar network of corruption of the Italian authorities, which keeps blocking, illegally, the defenses of the Free Territory of Trieste, of its citizens, of its enterprises, of its international Free Port and of the rights that all States and their enterprises have over it.
And it dare to treat as scrap paper also the international Treaties in force with the United States of America.
The legal battle goes on.
The I.P.R. F.T.T. and those who delegated it must now oppose also this scandalous and destabilizing political judgment, on one side seeking its annulment, on the other side, addressing the European Court of Justice directly.
But it should also be the time that the brave legal battle of those volunteers, standing for the rights of Trieste and of all other States, started receiving also the international attention and support it deserves.
Anyone wishing to support the I.P.R. F.T.T.’s actions may make a donation via bank transfer using the following data:
bank transfers from Trieste or from Italy:
Beneficiary: IPR-FTT
IBAN: IT15B0307502200CC0010785087
Description: donation to support the lawsuits of the I.P.R. F.T.T.
additional data for international bank transfers (including from EU Member States):
BIC: BGENIT2TXXX
SWIFT: BGENIT2T
