What will happen to the Genoa breakwater?
Already a few hours after the Anac's decision to pass its observations on the contracts for the construction of the Genoa breakwater to the Prosecutor's Office and the Court of Auditors, doubts and uncertainties have increased
After the aggressive intervention of the Anac on the contracts for the construction of the Genoa breakwater, the political world, but also the administrative and institutional one, are trying to reconnect the threads, understand what is happening and, above all, what will be the scope of the possible consequences.
THE END OF THE GENOA MODEL?
One fact is certain: if the ANAC were to be right, the "Genoa model" would already be waning, even though it had set a precedent and promised to be duplicated over and over again in a country that lives only on emergencies. The political tribulations between the Emilia Romagna region, hit by two bad floods in 2023, and Rome had already made it clear how delicate it was to find a solution on the name of the commissioner who the "Genoa model" would like to be the closest territorial reference politician to the disaster site.
DOES THE DREAM OF THE SUPER COMMISSIONER ALSO FAST?
But it is precisely the figure of the commissioner who is most at risk of coming out ruined by the matter, if the most serious complaints from the ANAC had a judicial aftermath capable of resulting in conviction.
If the Authority's findings had a specific weight from a criminal point of view it would mean not only that those infamous ex ante controls looked at with intolerance by the political world are useful and should not be abolished, but also that "the single man in command", although on site is not necessarily able to guarantee that all the money put on the table is spent only in the interest of its community rather than in favor of certain contractors.
WHAT THE PRESIDENT OF THE REGION SAYS
The president of the Liguria Region, Giovanni Toti , minimizes ("Once again a fundamental work for Genoa, for Liguria but also for the whole country is contested for a flaw in form and not in substance"), but he seems not to have understood the scope of the findings of the Anti-Corruption Authority is not at all, which instead speaks of a completely illegitimate modus operandi , aimed at favoring the subject identified for the contract, without a tender and with possible waste of public money in the event of variations accepted "upstream" of the work, practically sight unseen.
THE GENOA BACKGROUND DAM AND THE PNRR
What is certain is that just a few hours after the Anac's decision to pass its observations to the Prosecutor's Office and the Court of Auditors, doubts and uncertainties have increased. Starting with a crucial question: where does the work fit in relation to the Pnrr ? Giorgio Santilli , a journalist expert in public works, seems to have no doubts on the Foglio : “almost all the headlines say that the Genoa breakwater is a work included in the Pnrr: this is not true. The work – he explains – benefits from the simplifications of the Pnrr because it is included in a list of legislative decree 77/2021 and is included in the National Plan complementary to the Pnrr (which finances it with 500 million). The difference is abysmal in terms of EU controls, accounting within Regis, mandatory time deadlines, etc.."
WHAT THE ANAC SAYS
Yet, as Santilli himself reports ("paradoxically the Anac resolution itself says in some passages that the Genoa breakwater is a work included in the Pnrr"), this assumption is reiterated in the documents and declarations of the Authority.
She did so again in the last few hours, responding – somewhat irregularly – to the criticisms from the Minister of Infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, and explaining that she intervened "not with the intention of stopping the work, whose strategic and fundamental nature is not being questioned but, on the contrary, precisely to prevent this important realization from being blocked or delayed later, due to failure to comply with legal procedures, also putting Pnrr funding at risk".
PNRR Yes OR NO?
Anac itself claims that the work is financed with funds made available by Brussels following the pandemic. This is not a "formal flaw" (as Toti would say), because if it is a work by Next Generation Eu it has been validated by the European Commission and the latter would then also have the possibility to review the progress and regularity of the works .
If, however, it is a work that simply exploits the preferential lane of the Pnrr infrastructures, then the confusion increases even more and it is even more difficult to understand the reason for this accelerated process compared to the norm.
In the latter case, it should be clarified why it was chosen to speed up the bureaucratic process even at the expense of controls, since it is not an infrastructure characterized by those requirements of necessity and urgency that could justify similar rules?
Thinking of Genoa, moreover, there are other urgent infrastructures, such as for example the Bisagno spillway useful for avoiding floods, which has also recently seen the rehabilitation of the anti-mafia interdiction on the consortium in charge of its construction. Yet another example that controls are useful?
THE ADDITIONAL CHECK FOR 330 MILLION EUROS
Regardless of whether or not the work was submitted to Brussels when Italy presented its Resilience and Restart Plan, the latest funds arriving from Rome are certainly connected to the Pnrr.
According to Shipping Italy , an online newspaper dedicated to maritime transport, all the resources added by the Government to the program " Development of maritime accessibility and resilience of port infrastructure " within the scope of the decree with which has recently remodeled the Complementary Fund (Pnc) to the Pnrr.” It is 330 million.
In fact, Santilli again denounces from the columns of the Foglio : “the government in the Pnrr law decree inserts 330 million of refinancing evidently useful to adjust accounts that did not add up between an award of 825 million and a declared cost of 1.3 billion; but he slips them in on the sly, passing them off as refinancing of the "development of maritime accessibility" (and fortunately this time the Accounting Office does a meritorious work of transparency by reporting the destination of the funds in the Technical Report of paragraph 6 of article 1)".
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/che-cosa-succedera-alla-diga-foranea-di-genova/ on Sat, 06 Apr 2024 05:13:27 +0000.