The Pnrr agitates the government: Fitto convenes an emergency summit. Schlein: “Meloni come to the Chamber”

The urgent summons, while Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was headed to Vilnius for the NATO summit, arrived yesterday evening from Raffaele Fitto, the minister entrusted with the delegation to the Pnrr: control room at 1.30 pm, to discuss “the changes of the fourth installment”. There will be ministers and undersecretaries delegated to Palazzo Chigi, as well as representatives of the territories, Massimiliano Fedriga at the head of the conference of the regions and Antonio Decaro, president of Anci, representing the mayors. A large presence that signals the delicacy of the passage. If it is an emergency, it will be understood shortly after, in the press conference scheduled for 3 pm, immediately after the summit. But it is clear that the government is struggling on the national recovery and resilience plan, this is nothing new. The third installment does not arrive yet and also on the fourth installment the delays are known. In the first case it is 19 billion, in the second another 16. Also on the agenda is the vague wording “miscellaneous and possible”.

Who knows whether the words pronounced last night by Paolo Gentiloni also played a role in the emergency summons. “With regard to the third installment of the Italian Pnrr, rest assured that the Commission will never proceed with the disbursement if the objectives are not achieved and if there are no results“, said the European Commissioner for the Economy during a hearing in the European Parliament. “This is another reason why the evaluation takes so much time. The third request was presented at the end of 2022 and the times are longer, six months compared to the 2 ordinary ones. We are doing a thorough evaluation. And the Italian authorities are working and I think the exercise will end shortly”, added the former prime minister. A warning, but also a sort of reassurance. Which certainly was not enough for the opposition. Furthermore, it will be necessary to submit requests to Europe for the general revision of the Plan, a deadline for which the government must arrive prepared.

“Meloni assumes his responsibilities and comes to explain to us in Parliament”, attacked Elly Schlein this morning. “There are 19 billion euros that Italy could have collected as early as February with the third installment of the Pnnr: we are in July and we have no trace of it. There are another 16 billion euros, the fourth installment, for which we had to submit the application at the end of June: we are at 11 July and everything is silent. Above all, the Prime Minister has been silent, silent for days due to the judicial troubles of her ministers and undersecretaries while Italy risks losing the resources it has painstakingly obtained from the European Union”, added the secretary of the Democratic Party, whose words follow essentially the criticisms that arrive at Palazzo Chigi also from Angelo Bonelli’s Verdi and Riccardo Magi: “But Meloni wasn’t ready?”, rhetorically asks the secretary of +Europa. Shortly after, Italia viva and Azione also joined the chorus of criticisms, from the mouth of the group leader in the Senate Raffaella Paita: “The government should come to Parliament to clarify the payments of the third and fourth installments. Enough with the melina, Minister Fitto had promised transparency”.

On the other hand, the words of Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti arrived in the morning to certify that not everything went smoothly: “As regards the trend of the state’s cash requirements, if the third installment (of the Pnrr, ed) had it entered earlier it would be much better”, admits the Northern League, “but we are managing the situation, trusting that this blessed installment will be administered”.