Pnrr delays, autonomy and post-Berlusconism. Meloni’s future is decided in the South

The 22 pages of the focus dedicated on 13 June by Istat to the effects missed by the approximately 90 billion of EU funds dedicated since 2020 to the regions of our South causes yet another bell to ring at Palazzo Chigi. It is a beautiful problem that intersects with three relevant political issues: the delays of the Pnrr and how to reconvert unusable resources, the differentiated autonomy of the regions that Salvini wants to accelerate as much as possible and the effects of Berlusconi’s disappearance. The Istat report offers plenty of numbers to what is already in the public domain. In 2000, there were 10 Italian regions among the top 50 in terms of GDP per capita and none among the bottom 50. In 2021, only 4 remained in the top 50, while the bottom 50 now include Puglia, Campania, Sicily and Calabria. There are three determinants: employment below the EU average by as much as 20 percentage points; labor productivity which in the years 2014-2020 alone was 9 percentage points lower than the EU27 average; demographic decline, which at current rates will see a further 7.2 per cent decrease in the North in the labor supply (i.e. residents between 15 and 64 years of age) by 2040, while in the South already by 2030 the decrease will be equal at 9 percent. The conclusions are inevitable: not only at the end of the ordinary cohesion funds in each EU six-year period do we arrive out of breath because we are unable to spend them, above all their allocation dispersed among thousands of micro-actuators on the territory is alien to considering major projects a priority to attack the three determinants of low growth of the South identified above. This should be the essential driver to which to allocate the still unused funds of the 2014-22 cycle, which must be used by 2023 in order not to lose them, and of the conversion proposed by the government to the EU for many of the 140 non-performing projects of the Pnrr indicated in the Fitto report revised by the Mef delivered to Parliament last week. The government appreciates the availability of companies, which have confidentially proposed the way of asking the Commission to allocate these sums – or at least a significant part of them – to incentives for direct investment by companies: times would be saved, they could be investment projects production hinged in the same regions whose municipalities are too far behind, finally, private finance would be added alongside the European one to increase the effects on potential GDP, incomes and employees. But the unresolved point is how to tell municipalities and autonomies: who have delivered detailed reports to Palazzo Chigi in which they say they are completely averse to having projects, announcements and tenders stolen. How much longer can we wait to decide? And how can one believe the answer is to attribute most of the resources to the large public groups, if even Rfi of the Ferrovie group suffers delays on Pnrr projects?