High Speed Salerno-Reggio Calabria, 17.2 billion missing to finish the work

The latest revision of the NRP has sharply downsized the Salerno-Reggio Calabria high-speed rail link, which will be financed with Next Generation Eu funds: instead of the original 1.8 billion, it will receive only 720 million. The odyssey of the work symbolising the infrastructural renaissance of southern Italy, which should connect northern Europe to Sicily, is destined to continue. Because an accurate reconnaissance of the funding already allocated and the needs still to be met reveals an irrefutable fact: 17.2 billion lire is missing to complete the railway up to Villa San Giovanni. That's more than the 13 billion allocated so far for the first lots and more than the cost calculated today for the Ponte sullo Stretto bridge. Even in financial terms, in short, we are not even halfway through the work.

From the 1.8 billion euro initially foreseen in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan to build 33 kilometres of track on the Battipaglia-Romagnano al Monte line (lot 1a) on which to travel at up to 300 kilometres per hour - passing through the municipalities of Battipaglia, Eboli, Campagna, Contursi Terme, Sicignano degli Alburni and Buccino, all in the Salerno area - the amount has dropped to 720 million euro for 14.7 kilometres to be built by June 2026. The reason? As the Court of Auditors explained in its resolution 65/2025 on the state of implementation of the Pnrr and Pnc interventions issued last Monday, the Ministry of Transport cited 'criticalities attributable to unforeseen and unforeseeable events of a geological nature'. Surprises that made it impossible to hit the original target by the Plan's deadline and led the government to negotiate with Brussels a downward reshuffling of both the target and the funds, which was accepted in the latest revision approved on 20 June. To the remaining 720 million must be added 122.3 million for the connection works to Metaponto: these 842.3 million are, in short, what remains of the European funds to finance the lot up to Romagnano al Monte.

The government assures that not a single euro of the 1.08 billion euro defined by the Pnrr will be lost: the allocation of national replacement funds for the Salerno-Reggio should find a home in the 2025 update of the Mit-Rfi 2022-2026 programme contract, the finalisation of which is expected in a Mit-Mef decree. An essential point, for the accounting magistrates. "It is essential," warns the Court of Auditors, "that in the next programme contract of Rfi there is adequate space for the rapid completion of the functional lot originally planned.

The bulldozers and moles have been at work since 21 February, when the deputy prime minister and minister for infrastructure, Matteo Salvini, specified: "Today's work is only a section of the continuum of what will have to reach Praia, then Reggio Calabria, then cross the Strait". The Court of Auditors' resolution also records the progress of expenditure, based on data extracted on 24 July from the ReGis, the Mef's telematic brain that collects all the projects of the Pnrr: on 30 June 2025 there were actual payments for Lot 1a of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria for 117.65 million, equal to 33.5% of the budget of 351.53 million on 31 December this year, but only 6.54% of the initial 1.8 billion. Recalculating the expenditure on the new ceiling of 720 million, the progress rises to 15.34% of the entire sum available.

In order to complete lot 1, from Romagnano to Buonabitacolo (lot 1b) and from Buonabitacolo to Praia (lot 1c), and to continue with lot 2 Praia-Paola and the doubling of the Santomarco tunnel (Cosenza-Paola/San Lucido), 9.4 billion lire of national funds have been allocated. Funding provided by decree-law 59/2021, the same decree-law that in Article 1 governed the Complementary National Plan, i.e. the domestic twin of the NRRP: in Article 4, paragraph 2, it allocates the 9.4 billion to the allocation of the Infrastructure Fund in favour of Rfi precisely for the Salerno-Reggio Calabria. To this endowment, as can be seen from the tables attached to the 2024 update of the Rfi programme contract, 767.3 million of other national funds are added, for a total available for the first lots of 10.16 billion, to which the 842.36 million Pnrr and the replacement billion that is to come must still be added.