At what point is the PNRR?
Pnrr between objectives, EU stakes, bureaucratic rigidity, unknowns and scenarios. Giuseppe Liturri's analysis
The cry of alarm that, unheard, we had launched about the excessive rigidity and the burden of penalizing conditions of the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience, implementing the Recovery Fund, has finally found an echo also in the newspapers that until yesterday only magnified its virtues . Suddenly we read of "rush to launch 42 reforms to be approved in 100 days" ( Corriere della Sera on Monday) or "alarm of the commissioners: Pnrr stalled the works do not start. We need special teams ”( Sole 24 Ore on Tuesday).
The bureaucratic monster that it was necessary to create for a normal activity for a government – that is to plan and execute investments financed by collecting private savings on the markets – is contained in a ministerial decree signed by the Minister of Economy Daniele Franco last August 6 which, by then, wandering between the stamping of the State Accounting Office and scrutiny by the Court of Auditors (still in progress, according to our sources). In the Official Gazette at the moment no trace.
This decree is essential to understand the size and rigidity of the noose that is about to tighten around the neck of the country for the next 5 years, hidden in the Trojan horse of European "aid". In fact, it has the dual purpose of assigning to the 23 administrations (ministries and departments at the Prime Minister's Office) holding the interventions, the financial resources (192 billion in subsidies and loans) provided for by the decision of the Ecofin Council of last 13 July. It also lists the 526 milestones (milestones, with qualitative indicators) and objectives (targets, with quantitative indicators) that the ministries involved must "punctually achieve", for the next ten semesters, in order for the Commission to proceed with the payment of each installment. For each entity involved, the nature of the requested intervention is specified, installment by installment, for which it must undertake to “promptly implement” it. Each installment includes a portion for subsidies and one for loans and the next, due starting from 31 December next, is equal to 24.1 billion, from which, as for all subsequent installments, the advance of 13% must be subtracted. cashed in in August.
And here begins the frantic race and the pains. Among the 526 objectives and targets, 51 are to be achieved by next December, among which numerous epochal reforms stand out. The list provides for the reform of the civil and criminal trial – just in these days being examined by the Chambers with votes of confidence – and the reform of the framework on insolvency, for which the Commission explicitly requests the "entry into force of the implementing legislation ". This is followed by the reform of the tax administration, which requires "the adoption of a review of possible measures to reduce tax evasion" and, after a few lines, the eternal stone guest: the reduction of public spending, which travels under the guise of the pompous definition of "reform of the framework for the revision of public expenditure (" spending review ") and which, by December 2021, provides for the" entry into force of the legislative provisions to improve the effectiveness of the spending review ". We are at the peak: to spend more (or rather, receive the funding to do so), you have to spend less. And it is not our interpretation: the subsequent goal of 30/6/2022 speaks of savings and requires "the adoption of savings targets for the spending reviews relating to the years 2023-2025" . Just to reiterate that we are not joking, as of 31/12/2022 a report is expected that gives an account of the actual achievement of the pre-established savings objectives. And so on until June 2026: Just last Thursday – to give the measure of the enormous importance of the run-up to the December goal – the first monitoring report on the state of implementation of the PNRR measures was presented to the Council of Ministers, from which shows the achievement of 13 out of 51 objectives / reforms. In particular, 19 objectives for investments and the same number for reforms remain to be achieved, even if the activities have already started.
But the devil is often in the details. The decree signed by Franco in August is the exact "copy / paste " of the annex to the Council's execution decision proposal , presented on June 22 – encyclopedic document of 621 pages in which the 526 goals are illustrated with the utmost precision / objectives required by the Commission – which however also contains the phrase “ savings objectives must correspond to an adequate level of ambition” , vice versa absent in the ministerial decree. Strange, right? But if in Rome they have lapses of memory, article 24 of EU regulation no. 241 to fill them. When the payment request starts, the Commission will make a preliminary assessment of the achievement of predefined objectives and targets and, if it does not consider them achieved, it will suspend payments. In particular, it could happen that if, after the Commission's preliminary assessment, the opinion of the Economic and Financial Committee is not positive (it would be enough for a single State to get in the way), the decision on the release of the payment should be brought before the European Council. , therefore at the level of heads of government. And, here, the decision should take place " in principle " within 3 months. What if there is no agreement?
As if that weren't enough, to manage this huge and complex game, the organizational coordination structures are no longer counted.
At the political level, a control room set up by the presidency of the Council of Ministers; at the social dialogue level, an advisory body involving stakeholders; at the technical level, a secretariat set up at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers to support the work of the control room and the advisory body, a central coordination and monitoring structure set up at the Ministry of Economy and Finance and technical coordination structures identified at the level of central administrations responsible for the individual measures. In order not to miss anything, on 15 September last, the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, appointed Professor Nicola Lupo as Coordinator of the "Unit for the rationalization and improvement of regulation", for the purpose of implementing the Pnrr.
When we take into account the actual convenience of the Recovery Fund, the cost of this elephantine bureaucratic machine will certainly have to be included.
All this haste to reform Italy, while speaking of the only really useful reform that the EU should make, that of the Stability Pact, this week the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire , spoke of “no hurry. We must be clear, there will be no agreement under our presidency ”.
In the meantime, we must revolutionize the country, under dictation, in 100 days, like a South American republic under the protection of the IMF.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/a-che-punto-e-il-pnrr/ on Sat, 25 Sep 2021 05:47:03 +0000.