It is a strategic reform in a PNRR key, blocked in the Industry Committee in the Senate due to the knot of bathing concessions and which, due to the government-majority dynamics, also keeps the fiscal delegation in stand-by. But that tug-of-war over the competition bill that sees the Government deployed on one side, Lega and Forza Italia on the other (political forces that are part of the broad coalition that supports the executive), will have to give birth to an understanding.
A very short time to find an agreement
The countdown to find an agreement has begun: it will have to be formalized by Tuesday 24 May, when the executive will ask the Senate group leader for scheduling in the Chamber in order to vote on the provision by 31 May. In the original roadmap, the aim was to approve the text in the Industry Committee already by Easter, the first step to arrive at the definitive go-ahead for the provision by the first week of July.
The recourse to trust is looming
If in this short period of time the agreement is not reached, the Prime Minister Mario Draghi clarified at a meeting of the Council of Ministers called urgently last Thursday, that the executive will not hesitate to ask the question of confidence in the measure. A similar message was entrusted to a letter sent to the President of the Senate, Elisabetta Casellati: the text, Draghi highlighted, was presented at Palazzo Madama on December 3, 2021, and by December all the implementing decrees will have to get underway free. In short, you have to run.
The solutions agreed to date are at risk
The detail, politically far from insignificant, is that if in the end the Government decided to place the trust, it would do so on the basic text, therefore the reformulations agreed by the government and the majority on a dozen other articles on local services would skip. hydroelectricity, port concessions, gas distribution, drugs and Antitrust powers. The stumbling block of article 2, namely the one on bathing concessions, could blow up the bank on all the other issues at the center of the bill.
Dams, local services and waste
On hydroelectric concessions, the agreement reached (see Il Sole 24 Ore of 10 May) provides for the regional tenders to go ahead and for the priority that the Regions should have granted to the project financing system to be skipped. With a simultaneous compromise between the government and the majority on an interpretative rule for the “golden power” on all concessions. From the confrontation between the executive and the majority, the delegation for the reform of local public services is reduced, which loses one of its qualifying points, that is the obligation for local authorities that give up the market and choose the in-house entrustment to give reasons, not only ex post, but also in advance with transmission to the Antitrust Authority. With regard to waste management, the final indication would be to reject the amendment, strongly criticized by the Anci and the trade unions, which aims to eliminate the privation of local authorities from the integrated waste cycle with unpacking of the collection service from those of disposal and recovery.