By April 30, President Draghi will have to send the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) to the European Commission to use the financial resources provided for by the Community Programming with the “2021-2027 Multiannual Financial Framework” (1.100 billion), “Next Generation EU” (750 billion) and the three loan safety nets (540 billion), for a total of 2,390 billion euros aimed at the European Green Deal, a Europe ready for the digital age, stronger in the world, for the promotion of the European way of life and for a new impetus of democracy by giving more voice to individual citizens.
The PNRR proposal, already launched by the previous Conte government, for a planned finance of 311.86 billion, of which 210 billion from the EU, is currently undergoing frantic rewriting by the Draghi government and, considering the specific and undisputed powers of the president, it cannot be excluded that the previous PNRR proposal will undergo more or less substantial changes.
In this delicate context, perhaps also in consideration of the poor representation in the present government of exponents of the South and the failure to reconfirm the former Minister Provenzano, who had done an excellent job with the “South Plan 2030”, widespread concerns emerged about the fate future of Southern Italy.
Mainly expressing these concerns, through an ever increasing spontaneous movement of Mayors, is the Network of Mayors “Recovery Sud”, created on the initiative of the Apulian mayor of Acquaviva del Fonte Davide Carlucci (in the photo) and in a few days became a point of reference for more than 180 mayors from all regions of Southern Italy.
In the document “Proposals of the Network of Mayors” Recovery Sud “, in addition to explaining the reason why the Network was born and that is” organizing an institutional response to the serious crisis of representation in the South, which in the opinion of the Mayors has led to a series of very negative results for the administered territories “, the inequalities of treatment between the municipalities of the North and those of the South of Italy are also highlighted, where the economic gap continues to worsen with a GDP slipping in 2020 to the levels of 1989, with a decrease employment rate of 4.4% compared to 2019 compared to 1.2% in the North; where the average social expenditure per capita records a huge gap (56 euros in Campania, 94 euros in Umbria, 127 euros in Piedmont and 173 euros in Emilia Romagna); where Puglia is in last place for the number of public employees per thousand inhabitants (7.5 against a national average of 11); where, as recently declared by the Governor of the Bank of Italy “the distance of the South from the rest of Italy is the greatest distance between a developing area and a developed area in the European Union” and where the GDP per capita varies from 36,000 euros in the Northeast to 19,000 euros in the South.
But the Document of the Network of Mayors of the South, in addition to photographing the existing gaps, also declines a detailed and detailed framework of proposals of undoubted interest such as: launching an extraordinary recruitment plan, to the extent of at least 5,000 designers specialized in community programs in the whole of the South (over 60,000 proposed by ANCI); guarantee essential levels of health, education, assistance and transport services, as underlined by the Minister of the South Mara Carfagna and, in agreement with ANCI, ensure a home for everyone, achieve effective energy efficiency and regeneration of the existing public building heritage and private through recovery plans for historic centers resulting from mixed public-private interaction; initiate wastewater recovery plans for reuse in agriculture, adaptation plans to climate change with priority of intervention on both the hydrogeological side, for the keeping of the territories at risk, and on that of the emission of climate-altering gases; define a waste strategy consistent with the specific soil depletion framework and with the primary objective of recycling and recovering materials in the primary state.
In addition to this, the mayors of the South aim to support the internationalization of agri-food production, to develop the Food Districts and to strengthen the Local Action Groups (LAGs); they also want a plan to be defined for the recovery of castles, historic houses and all the public cultural heritage still in abandonment or in danger; they aim to obtain exemptions for distressed municipalities; eliminate the bureaucratic hindrances that limit the disbursement and implementation of funding; involve the recipients of citizenship income in projects of social utility, in particular in the protection of woods, green areas in general and the improvement of urban furnishings.
The mayors of ReteSud also believe that it is essential: to intervene in the health of inland areas; carry out projects of economic-cultural exchange between the municipalities of the South and other areas of Italy, Europe and other continents; overcome infrastructural shortcomings through high-speed rail, as highlighted by the promoters of “We also want faster trains in the South”; launch a robust intervention in electric or hydrogen bus lines and a plan for the Southern Bike economy; develop social agriculture in confiscated and abandoned land, create a system of peri-urban municipal parks in marginal areas and, above all, define a specific development model for villages where the gap with the cities in terms of services and rights is still considerable to this end, accompanying local administrations in rewarding paths of social and territorial regeneration and placing the climate challenge at the center and finally implementing a real national investment to support good practices of resilient communities, capable of creating social and economic dynamism.
All this would seem an ambitious program or, perhaps, for those with little knowledge of the problems of the South, a sort of dream book. In reality, however, we are in the presence of proposals legitimated by too many years of abandonment of a considerable part of Italy, reduced to ballast for the relaunch of the Italian system in the world, but we are also in the presence of a clear and strong cry of those who, like mayors of small towns in inland areas struggle daily unequally against a development model that makes the poor poorer and poorer in contexts of unspeakable criticality and solitude.
It should not be excluded, indeed, it should be strongly hoped that the Network of “Recovery Sud” Mayors, shortly, very soon, will be able to expand to other public entities, primarily the Universities of the South, but also to mixed-public private entities operating in the most difficult and mistreated territories of Italy, to associations of productive categories and trade unions, to the world of productive activities teeming with micro-enterprises, to the variegated universe of cultural, social and welfare associations so that all this can cause a great movement of the population that in unison shouts with strength and determination: RETESUD NEW DEAL.
*Architect