Next Apennines, 18,000 new jobs from the post-earthquake reconstruction plan

In the EUR 3.8 billion impact on GDP and the more than 18,000 jobs that will be created, there is not only construction among the sectors relaunched by the Next Appennino programme, created for the socio-economic repair and revitalisation of the regions affected by the seismic events from 2016 onwards, Abruzzo, Marche, Umbria, and Lazio. There is also a lot of manufacturing, especially mechanics. The explanation for these figures for the three-year period 2027 - 2029, the result of Cresme's reworking of Istat, Inps and Ministry of Labour data, for Fratelli d'Italia senator Guido Castelli, the government's extraordinary commissioner for the repair, assistance to the population and economic recovery of these territories, lies in the fact that "we have not only dealt with buildings to rebuild, but we have thought about development. We have become a sort of 'Agency of the Central Apennines' damaged by the earthquake where there are flourishing manufacturing companies. Large research contracts with important investments in companies such as Lube, Ariston Thermo, and Sanofi, to name a few, were born from the programme'.

Given that research contracts normally concern projects of over EUR 20 million and that Italy is the country of SMEs, 'we thought of prototyping these contracts in a range between EUR 1.5 and 20 million so that they could be a stimulus to research for even smaller and medium-sized enterprises, not just for large companies,' Castelli continues. 'Thus a new form of support for companies was born, and significant commitments have emerged, not least because we have always chosen to reward the innovation index, aware of the fact that in companies, it is either innovation or death.

There are several cases of entrepreneurship that has relaunched in the area. A few examples. In Amatrice, the excellence of the Petrucci dairy has been able to withstand the crisis, relaunching its production and distribution; in Corridonia, in the province of Macerata, the production innovation of L:A:S - Laser Art Style has been able to combine traditional craftsmanship and technological innovation, becoming a point of reference in the home décor, fashion and automotive interiors sectors; in Ascoli Piceno, the Centauroos start-up project has succeeded in converting the rubble of the earthquake into urban furnishing and design elements.

Italy is a land of earthquakes, the last one in 2016 being the most pronounced. This is why, says Commissioner Castelli, 'we have set ourselves the problem not only of repairing houses and schools, but also of revitalising territories that would otherwise be at risk of depopulation and deindustrialisation, with serious consequences also from a hydrogeological point of view, because in depopulated mountain areas fragility is exacerbated'. The seismic crisis of 2016 was intertwined with the demographic and climatic crisis in the regions of central Italy "with a downgrading of their social and economic characteristics, so much so that Umbria and Marche were placed in transition, like the South, with the extension of the two regions into the Southern ZES," Commissioner Castelli points out. The earthquake, however, did nothing but aggravate a pre-existing crisis, and that is why we have placed the economic and social revitalisation of these areas at the centre of the plan. We had two billion from the Supplementary Fund dedicated to large construction sites from 2016 onwards, to which we added L'Aquila even though the earthquake was in 2009'.

In the distribution of investments, 'a first part, more than one billion euro, concerned the revitalisation of road and digital infrastructures, which are fundamental for there to be nationwide mending: geography often prevents what technology and digital connections now allow, and that is why we have also supported the creation of four data centres. Among other things, we are digitising the archives of the 138 municipalities in the crater area'. Measure B of the Next Appennino plan has two sections that concern the strengthening of university research centres "with 62 million in investments, in a logic of improving attractiveness to young people and their skills. We have brought together the 12 universities of the central territory to organise research centres that aim to increase the university educational offer. A total of more than 700 million resources are already being disbursed, most of which concern small and medium-sized enterprises (538 million) and the third sector. We wanted to stimulate investment at every level,' Castelli explains.