Meloni: Pnrr agenda respected. Now race for the last mile

She vindicates the results achieved and emphasises, in the light of the numbers, the goodness of the decision to amend the Pnrr. Giorgia Meloni, in connection with the 'L'Italia del Pnrr' forum held yesterday at the Museum of Science and Technology in Milan, goes straight to the point. 'A little less than four years ago,' she says, 'we inherited the great responsibility of carrying forward the most substantial Recovery and Resilience Plan in Europe, both financially and in terms of objectives. A challenge that for some was impossible to win,' he says. Today, adds Meloni, we can speak of a 'primacy of Italia on the NRP that finds correspondence in the numbers: 166 billion euro received, 416 targets achieved, 660 thousand projects financed of which 550 thousand completed and about 100 thousand under implementation. In dialogue with the European Commission, we revised the objectives, corrected the criticalities, integrated the plan with the RePower Eu, i.e. with investments in energy security, and thus the new Italian Pnrr was born, a more coherent plan, more capable of responding to the concrete needs of citizens, families, and businesses'.

Changing the governance and rewriting the NRP was decisive, as the Minister for European Affairs and Cohesion Policy, Tommaso Foti, also explained. Who also responds to the criticism that has come in recent days on the quality of expenditure. "Could we have concentrated spending on fewer projects and made a greater impact on the transformation of the country? Perhaps yes, but you have to put it in context. We had just come out of Covid and we decided to distribute more projects over the territory so as not to leave anyone behind'.

Today, the Plan is at the last mile. Nine instalments have been realised, Foti explains, with all targets achieved and EUR 166 billion paid out to Italia. "We have a final instalment with 159 targets amounting to EUR 28.4 billion. Practically,' says Foti, 'we are in the position of having to make three times the average effort in a third of the time available. But according to Foti, there is no time to think about changes. "Cutting Pnrr funds is not an easy thing. We can evaluate eventual savings but until 30 June they cannot be quantified. The situation is different with regard to the cohesion funds, where an ad hoc measure is needed because currently the rule only concerns energy efficiency'.

There is no need for cuts in the NRP, says the minister. "We have committed the funds almost in full and therefore one month after the closure of the NRP, three months after the reporting, the margins for any cuts are slim. We have to submit, as the Commission has requested, a eventual reprogramming by 31 May'.

Now the game shifts to the legacy, the legacy of the NRP, as explained by the two Directors-General of the European Commission who spoke yesterday, Paul Kutos (Dg Ecfin) and Marie Donnay (Sg Reform). The ability to use the leverage of projects to drive growth from the horizontal competences activated, digitalisation and simplification above all, and from vertical projects.