Pnrr, pressing from Palazzo Chigi on Chambers and ministries: “Now anti-delay decree” – Corriere.it

Another week, maximum ten days, and it will be clear which administrations are on time with the objectives of the National Recovery Plan (Pnrr). The same expectation and we will see if the Parliament also works on time to achieve within the year all the objectives of the Pnrr that require its intervention, above all the implementation of the competition law in sectors such as energy or local public services. At that point the government will decide: if the progress is not concrete enough, the intention of the Prime Minister is to issue a decree. The provision should be approved in the Council of Ministers between Christmas and the end of the year, in fact to unblock all the reforms still awaited in Brussels in one fell swoop and thus be able to request the next tranche of funds of 19 billion euros.

The ministerial administrations and the Chambers are faced with what has been done ultimatum: accelerate the reforms of the Pnrr to be completed within the month or be replaced by decree. In any case, a government decree on the Pnrr will arrive in the coming weeks, observe people close to the dossier: it will be done, perhaps in the first half of January, even if it is not necessary to unblock the latest reforms expected for 2022 in extremis. However, Chigi intends to review in depth what is called the governance of the Pnrr: the management and monitoring system of existing projects, of the reforms that must progress with them and of the programming of new projects that should enter the list with the modification by next February of the current design of the Pnrr.

Change the governance of the Plan is always a profoundly political act, not a bureaucratic step. On that aspect, the second government of Giuseppe Conte entered a crisis just over two years ago, when the then prime minister tried to centralize powers on Palazzo Chigi and triggered a revolt in Italia Viva and in the high administration. That goal that Conte missed may not be very far from what Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Affairs Minister Raffaele Fitto have in mind today. The decree on governance of the Pnrr will in fact aim to strengthen the effectiveness of the control of the Plan precisely in the Presidency of the Council. In the first place, the strengthening of the “substitute powers”, ie the government’s ability to place administrations that are behind schedule on projects, will be strengthened; as for this, the model left by Mario Draghi’s government is judged as too weak and at the moment it is intended to use the new prerogatives, when necessary, without looking at the political color of the administrations. In parallel, a new cycle of administrative simplifications will have to arrive, again with the idea of ​​going beyond what Draghi has already done.

Then there is the part of the actual government of the Plan. Fitto, who has the delegation to the Pnrr e to ordinary European funds, it intends to make direct use of the Central Accounting Service (which is at the Ministry of the Economy) for financial reporting. But that’s not enough. In the next six weeks, it will be better understood which Pnrr projects are behind or do not have a chance to make it by the 2026 deadline, especially among construction projects. At that point Fitto, who is in the presidency of the Council, will need structures that take care of new projects consistent with the RepowerEU plan of Brussels: the priorities are works of energy independence (from electricity networks from renewables, to regasifiers, gas pipelines ) and energy saving. In this regard, the government is already discussing with the large companies in the sector, from Enel to Snam, in view of a confrontation with Brussels in February. New European subsidized loans could be needed, available for a hundred billion. Or a conversion of certain funds on projects deemed to be discarded of the current Pnrr.

The quality of administrative work will count a lot, even in ministries. With the idea a Palazzo Chigi not to apply one spoils system among senior officials – placing only people they trust – but to confirm only those who demonstrate that they know how to make the Plan work.