It is not difficult to find information about the agreements signed between the Defense Industries Agency — which oversees the Baiano di Spoleto Land Munitions Military Plant — and various actors in the arms industry such as Leonardo and KNDS Ammo Italy, or about Minister Urso’s statements regarding the role of AST in weapons production. These are long-term investment plans aimed at the reindustrialization of these production sites in line with the massive increase in defense spending envisioned over the coming years by the ReArm Europe plan and the rise to 5% of GDP allocated to NATO military expenditure.
The regional government led by the Democratic Party (PD) is certainly not unaware of these plans for military reindustrialization. On the contrary: during a meeting held last May at the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy between Minister Urso, Arvedi CEO Mario Caldonazzo, regional president Stefania Proietti, and trade unions, the minister declared: “AST steel will find use in high-technology sectors that are experiencing strong growth, such as Defense, Aerospace, and Energy” (source: Corriere dell’Umbria, 02/05/2025). This statement was echoed by the company’s management, which asserted that: “The investments set out in the financial plan will proceed regardless of program agreements” (source: l’Unità, 11/05/2025), meaning that the military conversion will go ahead, and the region will have to fall in line.
Umbria is thus becoming an integral part of the colossal industrial reconversion toward military ends that monopoly capital has embraced as a way out of the deep crisis gripping the Italian and European industrial systems — a “solution” whose inevitable outcome is generalized war, since the weapons being produced will eventually have to be used. All this takes place with the complicity of the Proietti administration and the silence of its left wing, which supports her government in Umbria — a mere fig leaf meant only to deceive those popular sectors that still believe in the so-called “progressive” and “anti-fascist” broad alliances led by the PD.
Adding to the ambiguity of the “broad front” governing the region is the motion approved by the Regional Council, proposed by PD councillor Lisci, which calls for adjustments in employment levels, wages, and safety conditions at the Baiano di Spoleto Military Munitions Plant. The farce is thus complete: while the PD seeks to ingratiate itself with sectors of Umbrian society that are firmly opposing the ongoing genocide in Gaza by supporting initiatives such as the Global Sumud Flotilla, it simultaneously promotes the conversion of major Umbrian industries to arms production — carefully avoiding any rupture with the Zionist state, which represents a key export market for Italy’s new weapons manufacturing.
It pretends to side with the workers of Baiano and Terni, calling for higher employment, improved safety, and reduced environmental impact at those production sites (with a dose of greenwashing that could hardly be missing), but only to ensure that the military conversion proceeds smoothly — effectively blackmailing communities deprived of alternative job opportunities and guaranteeing handsome profits for the monopolies of the military-industrial complex.
Where, then, are the councillors of the Green–Left Alliance and the Five Star Movement — the same people who, in the national and European parliaments, proclaim their opposition to rearmament and pose as champions of peace? Is it that, within the compromise framework of the so-called “broad front” led by the PD, such positions are worth less than their rhetorical posturing on the media stage, and are sacrificed in the name of “institutional responsibility”?
We communists harbor no illusions. We will closely monitor what takes place in Umbrian industrial contexts tied to arms production, in keeping with the internationalist spirit that defines us and with our opposition to the imperialist war toward which financial monopolies and the governments that serve them are dragging the world.
We call on the workers of the companies involved in this reindustrialization to keep watch over the destination of their production and to mobilize to prevent their use in war zones such as Ukraine or Palestine, thereby concretely helping to stop those massacres. We will expose the opportunism of those political forces that, in order to remain the electoral crutches of the “broad front,” abandon even the most basic consistency between words and deeds.
Perugia, September 17, 2025
Communist Front – Communist Youth Front
