Pnrr, Foti: 'Eighth instalment by November, no reformulation of defence spending in the review'

Italy has presented the request for the settlement of the eighth instalment of the Pnrr "and I have reason to believe, from the talks that we have had with the European Commission and in particular first of all with the task force that follows the Pnrr for the commission, that by November the eighth instalment will also be settled". This was said by the Minister for European Affairs, the NRP and Cohesion Policies, Tommaso Foti, in the Chamber of Deputies. Foti recalled that "as for the resources disbursed, they currently amount to EUR 140 billion, representing 72% of the plan's endowment.

The minister clarified that the Pnrr review 'does not affect any plans concerning health, culture, education and sport'.

"In the re-proposal of this reformulation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan," Foti assured, "there is no tendency to finance defence spending. As for Cohesion, he added, 'the five hypotheses put forward by the Commission are hypotheses that are submitted to the faculty of the stakeholders. As far as the regions are concerned, I cannot tell you whether or not there will be a region that intends to avail itself of this faculty, I can certainly say that we, of the five hypotheses, advocate three: one relating to social housing, one relating to water infrastructure, and the third relating to technological innovation. The fourth item, which concerns Defence, and a fifth one, which concerns an increase in renewables, with all that we already have in the field of Cohesion, we do not advocate, also because if the regions have already decided what their targets are, I do not see why we should encroach on their autonomy,' he concluded.

There are four resolutions on the NRP presented in the Chamber: one by Action, one by Iv, one by Pd-M5s-Avs, and one by the majority. That of the government allies commits the executive 'to leave unaltered the ambition of the Italian Pnrr, ensuring that the reallocation of resources takes place preferably towards other measures already contemplated by the Pnrr' or 'towards new measures compatible with the conditionalities, also of a temporal nature, of the Plan'. The Pd-M5s-Avs resolution instead asks "not to compromise the purposes and projects related to cohesion policies, using their resources to cover delays in the implementation of the NRP" and "not to use the plan's resources for expenditure related to defence investments". On the other hand, the Action resolution aims to ensure that "the resources of the NRP that cannot be spent by the Plan's deadline" are used "to financially support the European Defence Industry Programme". Iv's document would like to 'restore the NRP targets and objectives set by the Draghi government'.