Motorways, EU Commissioners reject toll reform: accounts at risk

The European Commission's axe falls on the draft reform of the highway tolls developed by the Ministry of Infrastructure. The text, which is still a work in progress, has been the focus of intense discussions for weeks with the Brussels technicians in charge of verifying compliance with the milestone requirements of the NRP. It is reported that on Thursday evening, during a rather animated meeting, the EU inspectors rejected the key points of the text fine-tuned by the Porta Pia ministry headed by Matteo Salvini.

The reform of concessions highways is contained in the NRP and Italy has an obligation to bring it home. At the centre is the issue of concessions that the EU would like to unbundle from automatic renewals and entrust to tenders according to the principles of the single European market. The fact is that the ministry has been pushing for weeks to include the motorway restyling in the Ddl Concorrenza (competition bill) that will see the light of day next Monday in the Council of Ministers (it is on the agenda in the pre-council meeting on Monday at 9.30 am), but the tug-of-war with Brussels could eventually divert the reform into another regulatory train. The EU commissioners' opposition is said to have centred on the approach of the toll reform wanted by Salvini and announced on several occasions by his right-hand man, Deputy Minister Rixi.

The subject of contention is the economic mechanism of the new toll system, which, according to the most expert observers, would in fact extend the Pedemontana Veneta model to the entire motorway network. In fact, according to the draft on the table of the Pnrr inspectors, it would involve intervening on the toll mechanisms by nationalising them and making them homogeneous throughout the country. The mechanism, from what has been leaked out, would consist in leaving the revenues from ordinary maintenance unaltered and drastically intervening on those from extraordinary maintenance, which would no longer be collected by the individual concessionaires but directly by the State, which in turn would redistribute them among the various infrastructures in the form of fees to the various managers. A forecast that did not go down well with the European Commission, which was concerned about the not very reassuring implications for the tightness of public accounts. The draft reform would also intervene on the supervisory authority by transferring the competences to the Transport Regulatory Authority and assigning them to a generic 'authority'.

But the motorway front is not at rest these days: there is also another dispute keeping the heat up, that of the Faib Autostrade, Fegica and Anisa Confcommercio service area managers' representative unions, which have called together all associates for an urgent meeting scheduled for 25 July. Among the items on the agenda are "initiatives to challenge the decree and the development of any action necessary to protect motorway operators". The acronyms are concerned about the recent reform of motorway service areas put in place by the Mit and Mase through a decree published in recent days. A measure, they write, "that strips managers and severely limits their activity".