the three women ready to put the Pnrr under the Corriere.it lens

From our correspondent
BRUSSELS – By regulation, the European Commission has two months to evaluate and approve a country’s request to amend the plan. And this, therefore, is the time that Brussels has to examine Italy’s request to change 10 of the 27 objectives that the Pnrr envisaged for the fourth tranche, the completion of which on the basis of the original roadmap was foreseen in the first half of this year. After the green light from the Commission – the process is expected to be shorter than two months – the Council will in turn have four weeks to decide. But in fact the Commission that evaluates the plans of Italy and other countries. On 16 August 2020, a few weeks after the green light from EU leaders to Next Generation Eu, the General Secretariat created the Recovery and Resilience Task Force, who reports directly to the President of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen. At the head is the French Cline Gauer, a past at the Directorate-General for Competition in the energy and environment before becoming deputy general secretary in 2018.

The Task Force

The task of this structure is to guide the implementation of the Recovery and resilience facility (Rrf), the recovery and resilience device of which the Pnrr are the grounding and which represents the main tool of Next Generation Eu. The Task Force assesses the progress made by Member States in implementing the NRRs and analyzes the regular reports. While the issue of bonds to finance grants and loans managed by the DG Budget which has been led since March 1st by the French Stphanie Riso, loyal to von der Leyen, of which she was deputy head of cabinet until her new appointment and first director of strategy in the team for Brexit negotiations with the United Kingdom. The task force made up of technicians, about a hundred officials, and collaborates closely with the Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs (Dg Ecfin), which reports to the Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni. At the head of the very powerful Dg Ecfin is the Dutch Maarten Verwey (role occupied by Marco Buti for eleven years). It is no coincidence that a Dutchman has been chosen to drive: even if it cannot be considered a hawk, its function is also that of counterbalancing an Italian toilet.

Supervision with 20 technicians

Gauer’s deputy with expertise on the Italian level the Belgian Marie Donnaywho arrived at the Commission in 2003, where she worked at Dg Fisma (Financial stability) and at Dg Ecfin. Below her is the Polish Magdalena Morgese Borys, Phd in Economics with a passion for a healthy lifestyle: a nutritionist coach complete with a certificate. Morgese Borys comes from DG Ecfin where she dealt with Cyprus. You not only follow Italy, you also supervise the plans of Sweden, Finland and Denmark. Gauer, Donnay and Borys have in common that all three speak Italian.

Each country has a dedicated team. Between the General Secretariat and DG Ecfin, about twenty technicians are employed at the Italian level. But the contribution of experts from other DGs on specific topics is also often added. In Dg Ecfin the deputy of the Dutch Verwey who deals with the Italian plan the Irish Declan Costello: always at DG Ecfin, super-negotiator of the Commission in the rescue of Greece in 2015, member of the Brussels group (the famous troika). At the time in Athens he was forced to travel under guard. Instead, the head of the Italy desk is the Austrian Paul Kutos, previously head of the Greece desk.