the most unexpected projects – Corriere.it

A racecourse, an 18-hole golf course, but also a health kennel and a cattery. In the Pnrr projects you can find a bit of everything. Panettieri, in Calabria, will receive 125,000 euros for the living crib. In Orgosolo, in the province of Nuoro, 500,000 euros will arrive to build a softball field, a game similar to baseball. While in Exilles in Val di Susa a loan of 199 thousand euros will be used to celebrate grappa with an ad hoc museum. In Foligno, on the other hand, the municipal administration intends to use 1 million euros to create a park inside the Franceschi airport, with the construction of a health kennel, a shelter, a cattery and areas for pet therapy.

From the racecourse to the golf courses

In Sicily, the city of Marsala wants to spend 800,000 euros to finish a racecourse that started 30 years ago and was never completed. In Macerata it was thought to use the resources to build one artificial ski slopebut after a local outcry the administration decided to abandon the idea. Cavriglia, in Tuscany, has allocated 4 million euros to renovate the local golf course. In Acerenza, in Basilicata, 300 thousand euros will arrive to build a rink for figure skating and hockey and a beach volleyball court. Projects that the Financial Times, in an article on Pnrr, defines extravagant. According to the City newspaper some members of the Meloni government would have privately complained about the quality of the projects presented by some municipalities, which could now be reconsidered.

The node of the third installment

For the Italian government, the problem will not only be avoiding waste of resources and making sure that the projects are consistent with the objectives of the plan but above all being able to use all the funds allocated by the June 2026 deadline. Economy commissioner Paolo Gentiloni, in regarding the payment of the third installment of disbursements, he spoke of technical delays, adding that there is good collaboration from the Italian authorities, work is being done well and some aspects still need to be completed. But the problem is not so much the third installment, but the changes to the Pnrr and therefore the subsequent installments. I wouldn’t focus too much on the technical delays in the disbursement of the third installment on which we are working to resolve the issues quickly, the challenge for a plan on the scale of the Italian one that of reviewing, updating the plan that the government rightly wants to modify, I hope to be able to discuss it together as soon as possible because it is an important appointment – added Gentiloni – . The Commission is very ready, flexible and is waiting to start working with the Italian authorities in this perspective.

The mini contracts that block the municipal offices

To further complicate matters the fact that there are Municipalities where there are at least 30 contracts per employee,

as Federico Fubini explained on Corriere della Serapublishing the data, elaborated by Professor Carlo Altomonte, economist at Bocconi University and by the chief economist of Cassa depositi e prestiti Andrea Montanino, who obtained them from OpenCup, the database on Unique Project Codes which contains all the plans with related entities actuators and amounts. And the municipal offices are clogged with almost 80,000 mini-procurements worth less than 70,000 euros. This pulverization engulfs the bureaucratic machine, but does not bring significant benefits to the country.