How to combine Pnrr and European funds for cohesion
What happens on the Pnrr. The speech by Alessandra Servidori, professor of labor policies
The latest Partnership Agreement between the EU Commission and Italy approved on 19 July 2022, contains the strategic framework and the selection of policy objectives on which the interventions financed by the European Cohesion Funds for the 2021-2027 programming cycle are concentrated .
Overall, this amounts to around 43.1 billion of EU resources assigned to Italy, of which over 42.7 billion specifically earmarked for promoting the economic, social and territorial cohesion policy, most of which is destined for less developed regions (over 30 billion).
The resources deriving from national co-financing are added to the European contributions, for a total of financial resources programmed in the Partnership Agreement for the 2021-2027 programming period amounting to over 75 billion euros in total.
In recent days, Istat has published the data of the previous agreement (each agreement has a period of validity of 7 years) which clearly shows that the convergence process of the Italian regions classified as "less developed" has not occurred (almost all of Southern Italy of Italy, with the exception of Abruzzo), which continued to grow much less than the average of the EU27 countries.
But it is the entire Italian country system that has been characterized by a process of progressive departure from the European average figure: in 2000 there were as many as 10 Italian regions among the top 50 for GDP per capita in PPP and none among the bottom 50. In 2021 among the first 50 there are only four left (Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen, Lombardy, Autonomous Province of Trento and Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste), while among the last 50 there are now as many as four (Puglia, Campania , Sicily and Calabria).
The growing gap in terms of income (measured in GDP per capita/ppp) between the economically less advanced Italian regions and the EU27 is entirely explained by the employment rate, which is 20 percentage points lower than the EU average. Only during the last 2014-2020 planning cycle did labor productivity, 9 percentage points lower than the EU27 average, also become a determining factor. The recent demographic trends taking place in Italy, particularly in the South, suggest that aging and depopulation may in the future contribute to widening the gap in terms of income with the rest of Europe.
The simulations carried out show, ceteris paribus and in the absence of interventions on employment and productivity, that the gap with the EU, in 2030, is destined to widen almost everywhere in Italy and in particular in the southern regions.
We are clearly lagging behind on the Pnrr as, moreover, Minister Fitto himself admitted also because Mission 5 of the Pnrr plays a transversal and important role within the Pnrr, i.e. support for gender equality and the fight against discrimination, the increase in youth employment, territorial rebalancing and development of the South and internal areas.
For these purposes it allocates almost 20 billion euros. However, putting local authorities into competition has distanced the Pnrr from respecting the equalization criterion which should have directed the territorial distribution of available resources to meet the objective of territorial rebalancing, and the consequence of this dynamic is that local authorities who risk to remain excluded from the allocation of Pnrr funds are precisely those who need it most.
We generally speak of small towns located in the South or inland areas of the country. But also of major cities, which have sometimes run into the same difficulties. To prevent this from happening, a clause was introduced which required ministries and other responsible subjects to allocate at least 40% of resources to the South. In many cases this quota was not respected. This is because often not a sufficient number of applications have been submitted by the territories. And since the Pnrr lacks quota safeguard mechanisms, when this occurs it is up to the individual owner organization to decide how to proceed.
Many ministries in these cases have simply decided to slide the rankings, falling below the 40% threshold. It should also be noted that Anci underlined how the resources of the Pnrr cannot be used to fill the personnel gaps.
Furthermore, the difficulties do not end even in cases where local authorities are able to intercept the funds. In particular, doubts are raised about their ability to complete the works on time. This is a fundamental element in order not to risk losing European funds despite the fact that the government has adopted measures such as direct aid to the municipalities with some experts, the modification of the procurement code, which however does not seem to be sufficient, as well as the possibility to advocate programming and intervention at a national level.
Minister Fitto, who has responsibility for the Pnrr, the South and social cohesion, asks for greater flexibility from the EU for both Funds, stating that it is necessary to rationalize spending but, taking into account that Italy has obtained from the EU both for the Pons and for the Por (national and regional plans) many resources, it is good to clarify: the problems related to a slow and often incompetent Public Administration where the competitions to renew the workforce are often deserted, the limits to environmental protection, the contracts still plastered victims of critical underworld, and much more, in short, the problems are many.
Surely having abolished the Agency for Social Cohesion was a bad choice and skills cannot be invented. Now only a group of recognized concrete experts of "national rescue" projects and programming can help to face and at least try to solve our problems with an emergency measure.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-coniugare-pnrr-e-fondi-europei-per-la-coesione/ on Thu, 22 Jun 2023 05:57:46 +0000.