Pnrr, slow contacts and blocked installments (also because our people don’t speak English) – Corriere.it

Before Giorgia Meloni left the G7 in Hiroshima, Ursula von der Leyen must have tried to speak privately to the premier. At least that was her intention, dictated by a concern of the president of the EU Commission: the stalemate with Italy on various aspects of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Because there is not only one front. There are various withrepercussions on open projects, on the revision of plans, on the total (or partial) payment of the installments of the Pnrrand therefore on the management of Treasury liquidity in a particularly challenging year because a very large volume of public securities will have to be placed on the market.

But let’s go in order. What prompted Von der Leyen to raise the issue with Meloni is that the working relationship between Rome and Brussels on the Pnrr would not be fluid. At least on a superficial level, an obstacle would derive from the fact that neither the Minister for European Affairs Raffaele Fitto – delegate to the Pnrr – nor the head of the new strengthened mission structure of Palazzo Chigi, the magistrate of the Court of Auditors Carlo Alberto Manfredi Selvaggi, do not speak English . The two would hold videoconference meetings with the European recovery offices every seven or ten days, without constant contact. And in at least one case they allegedly used a Brussels official brought to Palazzo Chigi by the previous government, Claudio Casini, to have their statements translated and the answers of European officials translated.

Thus, it is difficult to establish a working routine such as to quickly resolve the problems, which are piling up due to positions taken by both sides. In Brussels there is irritation because the Italian government, after announcing it since February, continues to postpone its proposal to revise the Pnrr and integration with RepowerEu energy plans: the Commission would like to be informed before the formal presentation, in order to evaluate the merits and prepare a package with Italy that passes the scrutiny of all the European governments (especially the net lenders of the Plan, in Berlin or in The Hague). Instead Fitto keeps almost all of his cards covered for now. The minister says he wants to buy time at least until late summer, even if paradoxically part of the revision involves some of the 27 objectives that Italy should – in theory – achieve in June in order to be able to request the disbursement of the next 16 billion Pnrr installment euros (the fourth in the series).

The intolerance in the Commission on this point is palpable. Certainly almost all the Rome-Brussels video meetings (with translator) are focusing not on future moves, but on the past. In particular, on the steps that are missing to release the third installment of 19 billion that Italy has requested since January. The best-known problems, such as port concessions, would be resolved, but Brussels is stiffening up on various minor issues: for example, it is required that the decree already passed by the Ministry of the Environment on the transition to the free market for electric utilities in 2024.

They seem trivial, but they are not. And not only because these difficulties reveal the erosion of trust and perhaps in part of respect between the parties. There is also a more concrete theme: days ago the State Accounting Office published the note on public finance in the first four months of the year and the news is not goodAnd. Not so much that the requirement, of 65.7 billion, at the end of April was already 42 billion higher than a year ago; above all, the liquid assets of the Treasury, those used for the current payments of the State, travel to only 40 billion, while they were at the certainly high level of one hundred billion at the end of April 2021 and 2022. In short, the government’s treasury availability is not certainly plentiful.

The reason largely linked to the Pnrr. The Treasury has in fact set its own government bond issuance calendar (which serve to give the liquidity with which the state works) assuming that the government would have promptly collected from Brussels the 19 billion of the third installment of the Recovery and the 16 of the fourth. But the former gets stuck in a context of cold and tense relationships; and the second in June seriously risks being so because Italy will not achieve some of the 27 objectives set. Indeed, he has already requested revisions for ten of them, three or four of which are substantial.
The most explosive case concerns the Superbonus, because 13.5 of the 75 billion spent on it come from the Pnrr and now Brussels wants to see environmental results, which do not exist: the agreement provided for only boilers to be replaced thanks to the tax credit gas-fired boilers, while almost only gas-fired boilers have been replaced with other gas-fired boilers.

Now Fitto and Meloni are at a crossroads. The Treasury now needs to know as soon as possible if it should prepare to place bonds on the market for 20-40 billion more than expected in the coming months. It would certainly not be a small challenge: with the end of support from the European Central Bank and a high requirement, this is already the year of the largest issues destined for the market since the beginning of the euro (about one hundred billion). There would be a way out: Italy can accept partial payments from Brussels, deducting the sums linked to the still outstanding Pnrr objectives. a legal possibility. But it presupposes clarity on future plans which, for the moment, is long in coming.

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