Italy asks the European Union to call into question not only the priorities of the national recovery and resilience plans but also those of the cohesion funds. And the right opportunity to analyze existing European funds, according to the Italian government, is the mid-term review of the multiannual budget of the European Union 2021-2027 (MFF). An entire paragraph of the letter sent in recent days by the government to Brussels is dedicated to the subject, which Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni spoke about in Berlin on the occasion of her meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Friday (see Il Sole 24 Ore on Thursday 2 February) with his comments on the proposed revision of the state aid regime, in response to the aid decided by Washington for US companies with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
According to the Italian government, in order to limit the distorting effects of US state aid, a critical mass of resources must be created “by bringing together different forms of public and private, national and European investments”. This is “essential in the short term to ensure the right margin of maneuver to review the investment priorities of Pnrr and cohesion policies that can no longer be implemented due to a radically changed context and allow the reallocation of funds already available. in support of strategic sectors». This would also be an opportunity to reconsider “very carefully the role that other EU institutions can play, in particular the Mes and the EIB”.
The letter no longer goes into detail, but it is known that the Minister for EU Policies and Cohesion, Raffaele Fitto, started a survey of resources from the first weeks of his mandate, including European and national structural funds for cohesion already allocated , which could be diverted to other objectives on the basis of new investment needs, starting with energy. This is an important change in the cohesion policy at a national level, which inevitably also involves the Pnrr. Two weeks ago, Fitto met in Brussels with the Commissioner for Regional Policies, Elisa Ferreira, with whom he started discussions that are destined to continue.
In the absence of official indications, what can be said is that the Regions have just started implementing the 2021-2027 structural funds, after more laborious programming than usual due to the two years of the pandemic. Stopping the car now, disassembling it and reassembling it seems impractical, even politically.
Furthermore, there are those who see in the government’s moves the intention of turning decisively towards a centralized management of European funds, with the risk of betraying the mission of this policy which is to redistribute resources among the territories to favor the growth of less developed areas, such as the South.