from the effects of the Superbonus to the electric columns – Corriere.it

The government and the country are getting used to the semi-annual reviews of the European Commission, with the steps to be taken to receive the disbursements of the National recovery and resilience plan. The one that started in January just passed, but June will be a change of pace. Not only because among the 27 interventions necessary to obtain the fourth installment of 16 billion euros, the targets (the concrete actions to be taken on the ground) increase, while the incidence of the objectives (the purely legal steps) decreases.

The delay on the columns

There is also a more concrete and politically more relevant fact: the goals are becoming more difficult, especially those that European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto did not mention in parliament yesterday. To understand what the problems and challenges are for Italy now, we need to look at the 568-page annex of the European Council on the implementation of the Pnrr. There you can find everything that Italy should do by June, you can easily understand what it hasn’t done and what else will be examined delicately. For example, Italy is certainly now irremediably behind on the finish line that concerns the installation of electric recharging infrastructures, i.e. the columns. In particular, notification (in Brussels, ed) of the award of all public contracts for the construction of 2,500 fast charging stations for electric vehicles on the motorway and at least 4,000 in urban areas would be needed within two months. Here it is easy to understand that the delay cannot be remedied by June and with difficulty by the end of the year. From the Italia Domani website, that of the Pnrr, it is easy to see that most of the tenders for electric charging stations have not yet been launched; therefore it is impossible that they have already been awarded. Therefore, the government is probably awaiting a difficult negotiation in Brussels on this aspect.

Ecobonus and Sismabonus

The annex of the European Council on the June targets then shows another one which is potentially explosive on a political level in Italy. The theme is the strengthening of the Ecobonus and the Sismabonus for energy efficiency and the safety of buildings, but in reality it is more in particular the superbonus which has already cost the State 75 billion. Since those funds are partly taken from the Pnrr, now Brussels wants to see what the concrete results are. To be measured, we read, on precise parameters: Completion of the renovation of buildings for at least twelve million square meters, which translates into primary energy savings of at least 40% and the improvement of at least two energy classes in the energy performance certificate ; then, refurbish at least 1.4 million square meters for anti-seismic purposes. In essence, the European Commission now wants to see if Italy’s largest and most widespread debt-based public spending program in recent decades has brought the concrete benefits it promised. All pending here. A judgment of merit on the environmental impact of the superbonus for now does not leak either from Brussels or from Rome. At stake, however, is the energy efficiency of this very expensive program which ENEA, the national energy agency which follows its execution, had repeatedly criticized in its reports. So the stakes are high.

The tensions between Accounting and municipalities

On the other hand, the overall transparency of the Pnrr as a whole is low, for a very practical reason: many municipalities involved in the projects are not uploading their data relating to announcements and tenders on Regis, the Accountancy database which should provide an overview of tenders and works. So the instrument panel that should serve to pilot the Plan doesn’t work well. For this reason, there is no shortage of tension between Accounting and the municipalities. The National Association of Municipalities accuses the Accounting Office of creating an excess of bureaucracy. The latter replies by making its staff available. Somehow, sooner or later, someone will have to make sure that the dashboard to drive the Pnrr is on and understandable.