ROME, Aug. 7 (Xinhua) -- Italy's upper house on Wednesday rejected a motion against a controversial high-speed rail project connecting the cities of Turin and Lyon in France, laying bare a widening gap between the two coalition parties.
The motion asked parliament to stop all activities related to the so-called TAV (Treno Alta Velocita) Italian acronym for High-Speed Train) and to destine the allocated resources to alternative public work projects.
It was submitted by populist Five Star Movement (M5S), which has long been strongly against the project, for it said it would be a waste of money and damage the environment.
Yet, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's far-right League -- which supports the TAV and is the M5S' ally in the government -- threw its full weight behind a rejection of the motion on Wednesday, with the help of some opposition parties.
In the end, the M5S proposal was dismissed with 181 votes against and 110 votes in favor.
In the same session, the senate voted in favor of other pro-TAV motions, including two submitted by center-left Democratic Party and center-right Forza Italia.
The Turin-Lyon project would be a 270-km section of the "Mediterranean Corridor", one of nine new rail corridors for people and goods envisaged by the European Union (EU) Commission in its TEN-T European Network project.
Once completed by 2030, this whole network is expected to stretch over some 17,500 km of high-speed and high-capacity rail across the continent.
The Mediterranean Corridor was planned to start in Algeciras, southern Spain, and end around Budapest, Hungary. And the TAV should run through the Alps -- more specifically the Mont Cenis -- with a 57.5-km-long base tunnel, 45 km on the French side and about 12 km on the Italian side.
It would be one of the longest tunnels in the world, once completed, and co-financed by the EU.
The project has always been controversial in the eye of various Italian civic groups, local associations, leftist parties, and of the M5S since its inception is a new force in Italy's political landscape.
Currently, the M5S is the largest political force in parliament, but the temporary alliance between League's and some opposition parties' senators made it possible to outnumber it.
In late July, Italy's Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, for the first time, spoke out publicly in favor of the project, saying that "blocking the TAV would be much more expensive than completing it."
Conte stressed he was fully aware of leading a coalition government made by two parties whose positions on the TAV were "totally and diametrically opposite."
One major factor behind his decision to finally support it -- Conte explained -- was that the EU would be available to boost its financial contribution from 40 percent to 55 percent of total costs.
Overall, the TAV rail was expected to require an estimated 26 billion euros (29 billion U.S. dollars), while its cross-border section through the Mont Cenis would cost an estimated 8.6 billion euros (9.6 billion U.S. dollars).
