third installment, close understanding – Corriere.it

The Italian government, confident of being able to quickly obtain an agreement on the payment of the third installment of the Pnrr funds, has already sent to Brussels, for a preliminary assessment, a list of investments that should flow into Repower-EU, the fund is intended to finance the energy transition that will arise with the reprogramming of the interventions of the Plan. Projects that are worth a minimum of 10 to 20 billion euros and which, after checks with the EU Commission, will be identified by the government by August, with the revision of the national Pnrr. Yesterday the Minister of European Affairs, Raffele Fitto, took stock of the situation in Brussels with the Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni. The agreement on the third tranche of Pnrr funding, 19 billion euros linked to the objectives achieved at the end of 2022, should not be long in coming, even if the actual payment could then take a few more weeks. However, the government, which attributes part of the delays to the lack of realism of the objectives chosen by the Draghi executive, does not seem worried.

The objectives of the Pnrr

Along with Spain and Greece, it is noted in government circles, Italy is the only EU country that has already requested the third payment of European funds for the Pnrr. Also for the payment of the fourth installment relating to the results achieved in June ’23, it is added, there shouldn’t be any particular problems. The objectives of the Pnrr, which will be redefined in agreement with the EU, will not require particular checks. Furthermore, it is excluded that the timing of payments from Brussels could lead to problems on the public budget. To achieve the spending objectives, which remain decisive, Fitto works on three fronts, the Pnrr, the European cohesion funds and the 30 billion National Fund complementary to the Pnrr. Three communicating vessels: the financing of Pnrr projects that are struggling can be moved to European funds co-financed by Italy, which have a longer time horizon, freeing up space in the Pnrr for the new Repower-EU measures.

The “procedural” schedules

The same with the Complementary Fund to the Pnrr, of which it had to follow the same strict rules on execution times, and which it turns out is already being revised. In the meantime, given the accumulated delays, the intermediate deadlines for the procurement and project selection procedures have been skipped. THEThe Ministry of the Economy has asked all public administrations to update the “procedural” schedules, keeping firm only the need to ensure compliance with the financial timetable (also because the increase in the spending capacity of the Fund’s resources is foreseen by the Pnrr itself). Compliance with the Fund’s spending program (3.8 billion euros in ’23) will in any case be a difficult undertaking, and even here the reprogramming of some interventions appears very probable. According to the Accounting report as at 31 March, implementation difficulties remain for at least 9 measures, which are worth a total of 7 billion.

Supply Chain Contracts

The Innovation Agreements (there is one billion euros available) are not taking off, with less than a fifth of the subsidies assigned, like the Supply Chain Contracts in the agricultural sector (1.2 billion). In both cases, the monitoring indicates the o% of loans granted. on the other hand, 39%, the implementation of interventions in the areas affected by the 2009 and 2016 earthquake, with most of the measures in favor of businesses still under investigation. The programs for the renewal of the bus, train and ship fleets are also in difficulty: in the latter case, out of the 800 million available, there are 440 million not assigned or, worse, renounced by the admitted companies. The funds for the renewal of rolling stock, on the other hand, they are still stuck awaiting the EU ok on state aid. This procedure takes so much time that regardless of the revision of the time schedules, it has led the government to stop the monitoring clock from the moment of notification of the provision to the arrival of the EU go-ahead.