by Gianpiero Magnani
At FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) started an interesting project named Recovery Watch which proposes, with more analyses, to examine the social impacts of the different implementation policies of the national NRRPs. The study analyzes in particular the measures contained in the recovery and resilience plans taken by some States[1] of the European Union, the critical issues encountered and the different ways of using the funds, offering specific insights on individual policies: among these, some reports[2] they deal with studying the right digital and environmental transition in the world of work, the role played by the PNRR in childhood policies[3] and the impact of measures aimed at reducing territorial inequalities.
The FEPS project involves a network of researchers and universities in Italy including the European University Institute of Florence, the Gran Sasso Science Institute and the Inequalities Diversity Forum; in December, it was given ample prominence at a conference, organized by FEPS and the Inequality Diversity Forum, which was held at the CNEL and which can be reviewed in its entirety on the latter’s YouTube channel[4].
Italy, in particular, is the one that among the European countries has decided to get into more debt[5]using all the resources made available by Next Generation EUeven those in debt[6]; The whole plan is presented as an imposing operation, not only for the huge resources made available[7]but above all for the complex network of institutions involved, with a centralized construction but with applications that directly involve local territories.
In this phase, it has been observed, in particular it is a question of carrying out a pre-monitoring of the potential impact of plans that have already been prepared and are now being implemented. Among the analyzes that must be carried out, the ecological transition must be declined according to the criteria of climate neutrality, employment and income stability, and environmental sustainability; the potential impact of the ecological transition on work needs to be studied, but also “gender blindness” and inequality of care which both represent the greatest challenges of the pandemic. In particular, territorial and intra-regional asymmetries (not only between regions but within the same regional territories) and between social classes are found[8].
Within the six missions, specific attention was given in the Recovery Watch to a feminist reading of the cure[9], conducted for eight European countries, from which it emerged that the issue of assistance in the various national plans is treated with fewer resources than the green and digital transitions; treatment, then, is considered a cost rather than a value: yet a socially sustainable recovery, it has been observed, is incomplete if the idea of a care society. A focus was also dedicated to policies for early childhood, which are fundamental for both employment and social inclusion, and there are few countries close to the objective of the European Strategy for assistance[10]: Italy has allocated three billion to childcare policies and among the objectives there is the creation by 2025 of over 264,000 places between nursery schools and kindergartens.
The conference at CNEL also highlighted how difficult it is for our country to monitor and evaluate: Italy does not have a tradition of monitoring, and in particular of monitoring participatednor of evaluation to be able to correct “on the run” the things that are wrong.
Three dimensions prove to be of particular importance: the territorial one, participation in the public debate (at various levels and which is particularly lacking in our country), multilevel governance (which is highly centralized in Italy) with the necessary renewal of the public administration. How much, then, are the PNRR measures “place sensitive”? Policies, that is, per people but in the places: this is the theme of a study[11] specific that compares Italy, Spain and Portugal on cohesion policies.
The comparison between these three countries made it possible to monitor the effective implementation of the PNRR to understand whether or not it helps territorial cohesion policies: Italy, in particular, declared that it spends 49.55% of the funds on territorial cohesion , of which 40% in the South (for 82 billion euro), but there is a problem of institutional gap between North and South which has not been taken into consideration as most of the funds are allocated through tenders, however many municipalities do not have the necessary planning skills: it is what Gianfranco Viesti has defined as “a total in search of addends”[12], which has produced a competitive selection which fortunately takes place within groups of regions close to each other, but which in any case risks further increasing territorial inequalities rather than reducing them. Spain, for its part, declared that it spent 55.94% of resources on territorial cohesion, but targeting the most depopulated areas as it identified the demographic challenge as a priority; Portugal, on the other hand, does not even mention marginalized areas, but claims to spend 46.64% of resources on social and territorial cohesion.
The picture is even more complex if we then move on from the macro-territorial situation to an analysis of the micro-territorial one, where we find a multiplicity of interventions on marginalized areas which are moreover variously defined: the micro-territorial dimension in fact reveals a situation of fragmentation, both of the interventions and of the very definition of the marginalized areas; we speak from time to time of mountain areas, of rural areas, of the South, of territories under a certain number of inhabitants, a number which, however, varies according to the contexts (three thousand in some cases, five thousand in others), and so on. The SNAI strategy for Internal Areas is only partially mentioned.
Sectoral heterogeneity also affects the use of resources, for which, for example, more attention is paid to the energy sector than to the automotive industry; and the on-site presence of the necessary skills to carry out the investments: some countries are at the forefront, such as Sweden, Spain and Germany; it is therefore necessary toEuropean public industrial policy agencywhich is able to govern the digital and environmental transition, while guaranteeing the necessary protection to the exposed sectors.
There is one in particular multidimensional perspective of inequality which requires integration of policies in the face of the great heterogeneity of interventions and projects. We must not forget, in fact, that the PNRR has as objectives the recovery and the resilienceand that both must be achieved together: imagining greater resilience without recovery, limiting interventions for example to maintenance works without having clear guidelines for economic development (in which the manufacturing sector has a multiplier effect on employment), it is a serious mistake, as is focusing only on economic recovery without taking due account of the problems resulting from the non-linear redistribution of workers due to the digital and environmental transitions.
[1] A version, for now only in English, is available at this link:
[6] country_overview.html?country=Italy
[12] See also Viesti’s considerations at the link