It may seem like a small, limited issue, far removed from the major daily problems, but it isn't. The battle for the former mountain municipalities, those towns removed from the historical list with the entry into force of Prime Ministerial Decree 121—633 in all of Italy, and 102 in Sardinia—affects the entire region.

A demonstration is planned for November 18th in Rome's Piazza Colonna, and a delegation of mayors will meet with Minister Calderoli to demand a change of direction.

The losses

A single country that loses its share of Fosmit funding (Mountain Fund, already cut at the national level in the last two years: for the Island, there were 4 million in 2025 and approximately 3 million in 2026), loses tax breaks, loses special exemptions on school autonomy, but the effects are amplified, and are closely tied to insularity.

Roughly quantifying the economic damage to the administration of a municipality with 2,000 inhabitants is around €200,000 per year (between direct transfers and grants from calls for proposals), but the losses have a cascading effect on the entire local economy, making it more expensive to do business, maintain basic services, and combat depopulation. For example, the high cost of fuel also affects disadvantaged areas differently than it does large cities.

The distance

Distance from hospitals and essential services, travel times, transportation, infrastructure, connectivity, depopulation, and demographic fragility must become indicators through which to assess the actual disadvantage of territories. And this is where the issue of the 102 municipalities excluded from the mountain classification takes on a broader dimension and concerns the whole of Sardinia. It concerns the rights of citizens living in the most marginalized areas and whether those rights are truly the same as those of those living elsewhere.

Democratic Party Senator Marco Meloni emphasizes: "We cannot apply the same parameters to Sardinia as those for Trentino-Alto Adige or Lombardy. A mathematical formula cannot determine what it means to live in a peripheral situation. I propose that the Commission ask Parliament and the Government for specific, derogatory rules for Sardinia and Sicily."

Cristina Cossu

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