Flood in Emilia-Romagna, the damage count begins. Tomorrow the CDM

While the Civil Protection has today issued another red alert in Emilia-Romagna in view of a new perturbation in central Italy, in the areas most affected by the bad weather, the count of the damages accumulated last week has begun: with the foresight to understand if the worst is really behind us, or if even in the next few days the scenario should get worse.

One of the most affected sectors is, without a doubt, agriculture. Also because in the fields the emergency is far from over: in many areas attempts are still being made to drain the water, with the cultivated lands that will have to be cleaned of mud and rubble. For these reasons, it is still difficult to quantify the damage: if it will take a fortnight – weather permitting – to completely dry out the fields, crops will probably need four or five years to return to full capacity. The damaged fruit trees, and therefore to be uprooted, amount according to the first data to more than 10 million.

What is also compromised is the logistics system of the region. Currently, the roads closed because they are partially or totally destroyed more than 600. Anas – the autonomous national company for state roads – monitors the evolution of the infrastructure minute by minute, distributing hundreds of vehicles throughout the area that operate to rehabilitate the road system as much as possible. But, in the most serious cases (such as landslides and mudslides), the restoration of circulation will have to wait a few months. We are already starting to hypothesize the economic weight of the interventions: the governor of Emilia-Romagna, Stefano Bonaccinispoke of damages “for 500 million euros”. But they are inevitably partial figures, with the obligatory premise of waiting for the evolution of the next few hours.

Even in farms, the real extent of the losses is still difficult to quantify. There are over 250,000 animals to be rescued and, as often happens with phenomena that affect large parts of the territory, the damage is interconnected. In fact, the closure of the roads complicates the supply of the animals, with the previous supplies in many cases ruined by bad weather. And so, to return to a normal regime, the forecasts indicate at least a couple of months of work.

These are surveys that call the government into question first of all. If the damage estimates are, as mentioned, partial, this does not mean that politics is watching. Also for this, Sunday Giorgia Meloni has decided to leave the G7 in Japan in advance for an inspection that started from the city of Rimini. After visiting some towns in the Forlì area, the premier met the governor of Emilia-Romagna, Stefano Bonaccini: at the end of the meeting, a first was drawn up Road map which starts from tomorrow’s Council of Ministers. For the occasion, on the table there is also the possibility of activating a task force, with the corresponding appointment of an extraordinary commissioner ad hoc.

The challenges ahead of the executive travel on two parallel tracks: first of all it will be a question of stemming the real emergency, then of setting up a long-term program on which to base the reconstruction of the areas most affected. Already last May 4, with the occurrence of the first extreme phenomena, 10 million had been allocated; to these will be added, tomorrow, another 20 million “to guarantee relief”, as the premier explained yesterday. However, the decree that will be passed will use a total of 100 million euros: part of these will be used “to exempt companies and citizens from paying taxes”, Giorgia Meloni always said. A relief that will probably result in a freeze until 31 December of tax payments, such as the Imu or the VAT.

The remainder will go, in fact, in the difficult work of reconstruction. In this case, the first step will be “the mapping of affected municipalities”. Only then can individual interventions be addressed. But, in all likelihood, public funds will not be enough. And here we come to the real political crux. Elly Schlein, in her long interview with Repubblica, called for the use of the liquidity made available by the Pnrr. Instead, the premier shelved this hypothesis: “We need to work on other funds”. The government, in fact, looks the other way: “The European Solidarity Fund it can be used for emergencies”, Giorgia Meloni alluded to yesterday.

However, it is enough to broaden the perspective only slightly, to realize how much the ideas on the search for resources and on the projects to be drawn up are, among the political forces, very different from each other. Matthew Renzi, for one thing, called for the reopening of the mission unit against hydrogeological instability, established in 2014 by his government and then dismantled. But it is only one of the many proposals that emerge in these hours. The same ones that Giorgia Meloni and her ministers will discuss today, meeting in Rome to prepare tomorrow’s long-awaited CDM.