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Punctually, like almost every government, new procedures arrive to speed up the spending of cohesion funds. The decree on «cohesion policies and relaunching the economy in the areas of Southern Italy», approved yesterday in the Council of Ministers, strengthens the hold of Palazzo Chigi, with expanded responsibilities for the Cohesion Policies Department (in which it is already expected that the ‘Cohesion Agency), and new clauses on the defunding of projects that administrations will not be able to spend within the established timeframes. At the same time, to improve the efficiency of the PAs called upon to spend the resources, according to the latest draft circulated before the Council of Ministers, a robust permanent hiring plan will be launched financed with 572 million in EU funds: up to 2,129 units in Basilicata , Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily for Regions, Municipalities and Provinces and up to 71 for the Department of Palazzo Chigi.
The Development and Cohesion Fund (FSC) – a reservoir of national resources for the reduction of territorial gaps with a budget of 50 billion until 2030 – will maintain the current distribution, i.e. 80% in the South and 20% in the Center and North. The 2021 budget law (Conte II government) had tied the use of resources, as a priority, to the actions and interventions envisaged in the Southern Plan 20230 which had been drawn up by the then minister for the South Giuseppe Provenzano. The decree approved yesterday establishes that the FSC allocation is used for initiatives and measures defined by the Ministry for EU Affairs, the South, Cohesion and the Pnrr, led by Raffaele Fitto, and for the implementation of Cohesion Agreements which same ministry will have to sign both with the other ministries, for interventions at state level, and with the individual regions. It is not new, but a revision of the development and cohesion plans already foreseen by the 2021 budget. But Palazzo Chigi, through the Department for Cohesion Policies, will have a central role in the definition of the Agreements while on the PSC a decisive role was played by Cohesion Agency and an inter-ministerial control room. Instead, Cipess, on the proposal of the Minister for the South and having consulted the control room, will allocate the resources of the Fund possibly allocated to the central administrations and those for the Regions and autonomous provinces. To speed up spending, special accounts will be opened in the name of the regional administrations in charge of the interventions into which the resources will flow, which will in any case be turned over by the Ministry of Economy.
The decree, which confirms the use of the funds in coherence with the policies of the Pnrr (already foreseen), establishes in detail the chapters that must be contained in the Agreements, from the specification of the interventions, to the timetable, from the mutual commitments to the financial plan for annuity. And outlines the cases of defunding accordingly. Failure to comply with the annual roadmap and lines of action indicated in the Agreement will lead to a defunding corresponding to the difference between payments made and unused resources. Failure to supply the national project monitoring system with related expenses will also lead to defunding and, at the same time, the omission will be evaluated for the purposes of paying the performance bonus to the responsible managers. A wider publication of programming documents on the OpenCoesione portal is then envisaged and the mechanism that allows administrations to obtain advance payments is regulated. The request for reimbursement or balance can be presented only if the implementation costs are at least equal to half of the advance resources.
The provision launched by the Council of Ministers also intervenes in other areas. For example, for the internal areas, which are still changing: a control room is created at Palazzo Chigi which will have to approve a new national strategic plan within two months. The municipalities that are part of it will have to spend the contributions they have received by 31 December 2025, otherwise the defunding will be triggered. Limits have also been set for institutional development contracts, the so-called CIS, which can be stipulated exclusively for the implementation of interventions with a total value of at least 200 million euros and a unit value not lower than the thresholds of European relevance established by the Procurement Code .