Faced with a daunting new NATO spending target, Italian politicians propose that a long-discussed €13.5 billion bridge to Sicily should be defined as military expenditure.

The government of Giorgia Meloni is keen to advance with the pharaonic scheme to span the Strait of Messina with what would be the world’s longest suspension bridge — a project that has been the dream of the Romans, dictator Benito Mussolini and former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

There are some clear grounds on which Italy might be able to build a case for the bridge. Of the 5 percent of GDP NATO target, only 3.5 percent needs to be core defense spending, while 1.5 percent can be steered to broader strategic resilience such as infrastructure. An Italian Treasury official also suggested that branding the bridge as a military project would help the government overcome some of the economic and technical barriers that have stopped it being built in the past.