“WE FEEL FULLY abandoned ”, explains Giancarlo Bortoli, as a cormorant flies over behind him to land on Lake Lugano. A retired dealer, Mr. Bortoli is a citizen of one of Europe’s lesser-known micro-territories: Campione d’Italia, an exclave from Italy in Switzerland. With less than 2,000 inhabitants, the enclave was the result of land use planning in the 16th century. Like similar geopolitical quirks, Campione has a colorful past. Its local government casino was founded in 1917, supposedly to help unravel the intelligence of diplomats on leave during the First World War. Among those who later found it convenient to settle in Campione was Howard Marks, one of the largest cannabis smugglers in the world.
Visitors from Switzerland encounter a grand arch marking the border. However, “so far, it has been as if Campione is part of Switzerland,” explains Alessandro Alfieri, senator from Lombardy, the Italian region to which the exclave belongs. The inhabitants of Campione collected their garbage, purified their water and their telephones supplied by the Swiss public services. They drive on Swiss license plates. And until this week, they were indeed part of the Swiss customs area, an arrangement with which they were perfectly satisfied.
At the beginning of 2020, Campione was introduced into the EU customs area, which means that all kinds of new controls and duties will now be required. The ex-slave was already shocked by the closure of his (heavily indebted) casino in July 2018, the largest in Europe and the main source of income for the local community. With many Campione residents living on unemployment benefits of less than € 900 a month, having lost their jobs at the casino or at the council, the once prosperous exclave is a dark place these days. However, by placing it under a customs procedure different from that of the country which surrounds it, the EU may have opened up a potential new source of income for some: smuggling.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the title “Unhappy Recruit”