While the public debate fueled by the government has focused in recent days on possible changes to the contents or timing of the Pnrr, the technicians of the EU task force they concluded yesterday in the noble rooms of the Ministry of the Economy the discussion with the structures of the ministries and territorial entities on the current state of implementation of the Plan, and on the targets and milestones to which the December installment is linked.
More than scaling spending goals, already extensively revised by Nadef which reduced the 2022 program to 15 billion from the 28 of the initial forecasts, according to more than one participant in the meetings with the EU task force led by Céline Gauer, the attention of the EU examiners was focused on the state of progress of the reforms and on the implementation obstacles of the decisions already formalized in laws and decrees in the last months. A theme less loved by the ministers who in recent days have produced public reflections on the Plan, but decisive in the analysis criteria of the commission which are based on the logic of results rather than on formal approval.
The examination of the EU
Among the many chapters that ended up at the center of discussions with the heads of the various ministries involved in the Plan and with local authorities, a central space was occupied by the competition rules and the necessary simplification of the Procurement Code.
On the first point, there are two open fronts. Why the plan schedule it expects the implementation of the 2021 law and the approval of the 2022 law by the end of this month. The unknowns are on several levels. For the decrees already approved there is a hit and miss path in the territories, as shown for example by the delays of some regions, especially in the south, in redefining the governance of the water service. For others still in the pipeline, however, there are political decisions that are not easy to take for the new majority. This is the case with the new attempt to reform of local public serviceswhich on Wednesday obtained an agreement in the Unified conference subject to the opening of discussion tables on direct assignments, local transport and territorial areas, but above all it still has to pass the parliamentary test and that of the final go-ahead in the council of ministers. And at the same point is the mapping of concessions while the decree is still on seaside resorts.
The Procurement Code
For the new Procurement Code, the appointment is within days, but the stumbling blocks of recent months in the Pnrr tenders from Education to the Environment have highlighted in the discussions of these days the need to immediately identify the bottlenecks to be released.