Checks on the Pnrr, yes to trust The obstructionism of Pd and 5 Stelle- Corriere.it

The Chamber voted (203 in favour, 134 against, 3 abstentions) the trust placed by the government on the Public Administration decree which limits the power of control of the Court of Auditors on the Pnrr. «The government is exacerbating the conflict with the robes, while it should work to implement the projects. It is a serious forcing and puts fundamental projects at risk », protests the secretary of the Democratic Party, Elly Schlein. “If only one of the 32 billion that must be grounded by 2023 has been spent, the faults are certainly not of the Court of Auditors, but of the Meloni executive”, warns Francesco Silvestri, M5s group leader in the Chamber. For the government, it is Luca Ciriani, Minister for Relations with Parliament, who assures: «Legality checks will be there, as it should be. But they can’t block the works or we would miss the main objective». Even the minister who has the delegation to the Pnrr, Raffaele Fitto, who met the governors yesterday to talk about the planning and use of national and European funds, rejects the accusations: “No authoritarian drift”. The Third Pole, while not voting for confidence, shares “the need to speed up the operational processes linked to the plan”.

The debate in Montecitorio is progressing slowly: The oppositions are filibustering by presenting nearly 150 agendas and debating each one. The final vote is therefore postponed to today. Then the provision will go to the examination of the Senate for the final conversion into law, by 21 June.

In the decree, in addition to the elimination of contextual controls of the Court of Auditors, the shield on the rules concerning tax damages is extended to 30 June 2023, 3,000 hires are launched (2,000 of which in the police forces) and the extraordinary recruitment of teachers, the cancellation of the term is ordered «race» from the documents of the PA, the possibility is envisaged for the foresters of Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige to use pepper spray against bears.

But they are inevitably the first two aspects to ignite the debate. For the secretary of +Europe, Riccardo Magi, “it is clear that the government majority has a problem with controls, a problem of democracy”. Sarcastic Stefano Patuanelli, of the Five Stars, who raises a contradiction: «On April 22, 2021, the center-right proposed to strengthen the concurrent control of the magistrates of the Court of Auditors on the Pnrr. Today, since they don’t know how to handle it, they dismantle it. “How to change, so as not to die”», writes the former minister, now a senator. “You are not fascists, you are inept”, harangue to Montecitorio Riccardo Ricciardi, another exponent of the Movement, who is criticized by the current president, Giorgio Mulè for “excessive expressions”. For Action-Italia viva, in favor of the government’s amendment but which does not vote its trust in the government, it is “the Democratic Party that contradicts itself”, given that “the Draghi government also made the same interventions”. A thesis, that of an action in the wake of the previous executive, also supported by Matteo Salvini: “Have they changed their mind?”. The group leader of Forza Italia in the Chamber, Paolo Barelli, is confident in the recovery of a climate of confrontation: «The opposition makes the opposition. But it would be better if he worked with us in the interest of Italy, instead of just being defeatist and sticking to instrumental polemics. The Pnrr, conceived when there was no increase in the cost of raw materials, must be updated».

If the climate in Italy remains hot, from Brussels the EU anti-fraud office announces the opening of investigations “on specific cases” of abuses in the management of funds from the Recovery Fund. The agency, which has no coercive powers but can only recommend actions to national and European authorities, does not specify the countries in which the possible abuses to its attention would have been committed.

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