The appointment for June, with a long previous preparation as happens in European decisions. This time Italy risks coming under pressure not for having disappointed, but for the opposite reason:the economy fared better than feared when the resources of the Recovery in the summer of 2020, while other countries fared worse. It will therefore be necessary to understand whether, to prove the facts, a part of the billions assigned to Rome a year and a half ago will have to be redistributed to those who are further behind than expected.. The rest of the rules provided for it. 70% of the sums attributed to definitive Italy, while the remaining 30% – about 60 billion – could be partially remodeled. Indeed, the economy closed 2021 by 2.6% larger than the European Commission predicted when Giuseppe Conte, then prime minister, had himself photographed in Brussels with a clenched fist as a sign of exultation for having obtained help commensurate with an economic collapse. Spain instead of 1.3% below and Germany of 0.5% below. In the end there shouldn’t be huge movements of money, but what is opening up in Brussels is another delicate game. Another of the many fronts, just to stay on Recovery Fund, for whom in 2022 Rome will need a hard-working government. Not an election campaign government, whatever happens in the polls for the Quirinale in the next few days.
The front of the mayors
That the executive – any executive, today and in the future – should keep the bureaucracy on a short leash is clear from what is happening on the Recovery in the big cities. In recent days, the mayors of Rome, Milan, Naples and Turin have written confidentially to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Economy Daniele Franco to protest the first batch of calls for the approximately 200 billion euros in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr).The criticisms of Roberto Gualtieri, Giuseppe Sala, Gaetano Manfredi and Stefano Lo Russo they are not addressed to Prime Minister Mario Draghi or to Franco, but to the administrations of various ministries (Education, Interior and Labor above all), which immediately fell into rather clumsy errors in the distribution of funds. For the energy requalification it is planned to finance only one school per municipality, it does not matter whether it is Bondeno in the province of Ferrara with 15,000 inhabitants or Rome and Milan which have millions. The demographic criterion also disappears on new canteens and gyms (at most four per municipality, of whatever size it is). Milan even risks being left out because its cooking centers that serve several schools are not included in the projects. The ceiling on the 3.3 billion calls for urban regeneration then set at just twenty million per municipality – very little for large centers – and similar problems return to the social funds to be distributed locally to the Health Protection Agencies. There is a risk that smaller entities, flooded with money, will not be able to spend while large cities remain dry. In short, at the start of the Pnrr calls it was immediately seen that in the bureaucracy there are still those who work without thinking about obtaining concrete results. Daniele Franco and Palazzo Chigi responded to the four mayors of the big cities and now they are trying to remedy. But the alarm bell on the administration’s ability to put into practice the projects of the NRP rang immediately.
Commitments and deadlines
Also because the eleven months of 2022 that await us will weigh a lot for the PNRR today only at the beginning. In 2021 the general programs, the major reform frameworks and the first calls for public projects were drawn up.But from now on, different speed and capillarity will be needed. The examination of a government document not yet made public shows that, in addition to the daily work of unfolding the calls already published, between milestones (goals) and targets (objectives) Italy in 2022 will have 99 appointments to which the funding is bound. Of these, six are for March, 38 for June and the remainder within the year. The numbers in themselves say little, because among the assignments there are even less subject to controversy: among others the launch of a web platform on environmental culture or the seismic safety of places of worship (although then the criteria for subdivision of funds are always delicate). In this hundred or so actions of 2022 for about a quarter they have a real political impact because they affect the consensus of pockets of voters of practically all the forces of the majority of national unity.
The 24 burning files
The most obvious case concerns a milestone and a target in the fight against tax evasion. Within this year the Revenue Agency he must send 432,000 letters of conformity in addition, in which the taxpayer is asked to verify the correctness of his tax return and, if necessary, to correct it. From that initiative, the NRP has set a target of € 319.5 million in tax revenues this year alone, an average of almost € 740 for each letter of compliance.But the document, as it does for each measure, also indicates the risks of failure: Delay in completing the procedures for hiring highly specialized personnel and in implementing the necessary technological infrastructure. It is not said that, for example, the Lega or Forza Italia would like this mandatory 15% increase in revenue from letters of compliance. But there is no shortage of measures that affect the electoral bases of other forces. Perhaps the Democratic Party and most of the union may not like a school reform that provides for career progression clearly linked to performance evaluation (with the related risks of execution indicated in the government document: Parliamentary procedure for the enabling law). Just as M5S will not like the program (decree expected by June) which does not use the word waste-to-energy plants but speaks of adapting the network of plants necessary for integrated waste management. In short, there are many politically dangerous curves of the Recovery, the engine of the administration bruised as always. Anyone who dreams of an electoral government for 2022 must have spent 2021 on another continent.