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The European Commission essentially confirms the reading of the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti on the use of Pnrr savings. The device “is not an instrument based on costs, but on results” and therefore the flow of payments may “not be perfectly aligned” with that of the expenses actually incurred by the State, clarified the EU Commissioner for Economy Valdis Dombrovskis.
This would be the mechanism that allows you to find coverage for the suspension of the car tax with the Pnrr. Dombrovskis does not go so far as to define those savings as “national money” which the Government can use “as it sees fit”, like Giorgetti, but he recognizes that “there is a certain margin in terms of liquidity management”.
The wait for the Istat data on the deficit
A clarification that comes as anticipation grows in Rome for an even more important game for Italian accounts: on Tuesday 22 September, Istat will update the data on the deficit/GDP for 2025. If it fell from the current 3.1% below the crucial threshold of 3% and was then officially confirmed by Eurostat on 21 October, the way would open for Italy to exit the excessive deficit procedure. Giorgetti himself, on Friday in Dublin, said he was “hopeful”.
The stakes go beyond symbolic value. Exiting the excessive deficit procedure and returning to the ordinary arm of the Stability Pact would allow Italy to exploit with greater margin the national safeguard clause, the Nec, requested for additional investments in defense and energy security. On the one hand, going beyond the 3% deficit/GDP ceiling for measures agreed with the NEC would not trigger the excessive deficit procedure again. On the other hand, for Italy it would have an immediate return of credibility on the financial markets. And this precisely at a time of tensions on some sovereign bonds, under careful observation in the Eurozone.
The national clause and energy security
Meanwhile, the examination of the Italian request to extend the Nec to energy security also appears to proceed without any particular obstacles. According to what has transpired in Brussels, the list of expenses sent by Rome would be consistent with the categories of intervention agreed at European level by the Twenty-Seven with the Commission and the ECB (in the Economic and Financial Committee). The list still remains under technical scrutiny by experts, but at present it appears highly unlikely that it will not get the green light. The “green light” could already arrive at the EU Ecofin Council on 9 October, although the timing is not yet certain. Also strengthening the hypothesis of an examination without particular obstacles are the indications of the Minister of the Environment Gilberto Pichetto Fratin who, responding to a question on Elly Schlein’s letter on energy, states that some proposals coincide with the assessments made: on the “14 billion deviation” of the Nec, he explained, “together with the Ministry of Economy we have listed a series of actions”, which are “also compatible with the direction given by the European Union”. Interventions which, he added, “must concern the system of public and private buildings”.
Brussels’ clarification on the Plan’s savings
On the Pnrr front, however, Dombrovskis’ clarification attenuates what had seemed like a distance between Rome and Palazzo Berlaymont just twenty-four hours earlier. Giorgetti had in practice argued that the savings on the Plan’s loans are now “national money” because the loans contracted through the European mechanism are in any case repaid by the State budget and in the event of savings, space is freed up to be used for other coverage. The Latvian commissioner made an important opening, while clarifying that he had to review what Giorgetti declared: “there is a certain margin in terms of liquidity management”, because the Pnrr “is not an instrument based on costs, but on results”. The payments, in other words, would be paid regardless of the perfect coincidence between the amount received and the expenditure actually incurred: the results, in fact, count. And this is where the possible “misalignment” comes from.