Sos local authorities: with the “new” Pnrr at risk 900 million for Calabria

John

By John

The changes to the National recovery and resilience plan they are engaging the government on two fronts: the external one is obviously linked to the decisions that the European Commission will adopt regarding the proposal arrived in Brussels from Palazzo Chigi; on the internal side, however, the confrontation – at times harsh – with the Anci on the criticalities encountered in the implementation of the projects and on the prospects of the “new” Pnrr continues. With regard to the latter, however, there are already those who are doing the math, given that there is talk of the definancing of as many as 9 measures of the “old” Plan. For local authorities, in particular municipalities and metropolitan cities, the proposed changes would result in the risk of losing funds for over 13 billion euros at national level. And for Calabria there is talk, in particular, of a possible definancing of 905 million euros, or almost half of the sum (1.93 billion euros) relating to the projects previously entrusted to the local authorities of the region.

This can be seen from the elaborations that the Openpolis foundation it carried out by cross-referencing the data provided by the government and by the Anci (with the findings of the Ifel foundation). Looking at the numbers relating to the individual Calabrian provinces, it emerges that the one most penalized, if the Meloni government’s proposal were accepted by the EU Commission, would be Reggio, with a risk of definancing of 333.79 million euros (out of 618.81 previously entrusted) , followed by Cosenza (274.87 million out of 658.14), Catanzaro (135.85 million out of 359.9), Vibo (99.99 million out of 173.34) and Crotone (60.93 million out of 133.8).

The 9 measures that the government has proposed to definance concern: interventions for the resilience, enhancement of the territory and energy efficiency of the Municipalities; investments in urban regeneration projects; integrated urban plans; measures for flood risk management and hydrogeological risk reduction; the use of hydrogen in hard-to-abbot sectors; the enhancement of community social services and infrastructures in inland areas; the promotion of innovative plants (including offshore); the enhancement of assets confiscated from the mafias; the protection and enhancement of urban and extra-urban green areas.

The government essentially justified the choice by speaking of investments that would largely finance existing projects or projects that risk not being completed by 2026. Local authorities have often been indicated as responsible for the delays but the Anci has re-launched the ball of the responsibility precisely in the field of central administrations through a special dossier published in recent weeks. «The data for April 2023 – reads the report of the Association of Municipalities – speaks of 41 thousand tenders already banned by the Municipalities as part of Pnrr projects. The analysis of the state of implementation of the Plan with a view to its partial revision therefore shows how the investments of Municipalities and Metropolitan Cities do not present delays and criticalities such as to justify the hypothesis of their reprogramming». It is also true that several of the definanced measures have hitherto presented critical issues.

After the controversy raised by the announcement of the definancing, the executive has ensured that all projects will be recovered through the use of resources from other funding sources. But another dossier, created by the Chamber and Senate Research Services just in recent days, has raised doubts about the ability to intercept the necessary resources, explaining that it does not specify “what will be the tools and methods through which the source of funding will be changed of the resources definanced by the Pnrr».