Passport chaos, acceleration in issuances: +38% in April. Here's why

The online priority agenda works. With the new system fine-tuned at the Viminale, thanks to the special working group set up by Police Chief Vittorio Pisani, the passport funnel seems to have been overcome and normalisation set in motion. At least judging by the data for April, the first month in which the experimentation of a fast track booking system for those who need the document within thirty days of the request, which started on 5 March for ten questuras, has been extended to all the provinces and police stations, which will be fully covered by today.

Passports printed rose from 218,443 in April 2023 to 301,674 in the same month of 2024 (+38.1%). Appointments on the ordinary diary grew from 230,000 to 320,000, to which must be added the 30,000 made with the priority diary and the 4,500 with the form reserved for those with urgent matters in 15 days: a total of 354,500. A leap of 54 per cent. If it continues at this pace - is the forecast of the Ministry of the Interior - a record 3.4 million passports will be printed in 2024, 25 per cent more than the 2.726 million of 2023 and almost double the 1.777 million of 2022 and the 1.673 million of 2019, pre-Covid. Just enough, according to Viminale technicians, to satisfy a demand that shows no signs of abating, thanks to the vigorous upswing in international travel and the difficulties in issuing electronic identity cards.

Looking at the map of the 106 provinces analysed, the biggest leap last month compared to April 2023 was made by Prato with +213% of passports printed (from 640 to 2,004). Caserta (+173%, from 1,762 to 4,810), Barletta-Andria-Trani (+156.6%, from 1,015 to 2,604) and Biella (+151.1%, from 454 to 1,140) also stand out. Restricting the field to regional capitals only, it was Campobasso that recorded the greatest improvement in percentage terms (+120.4%, from 447 to 985 passports printed), followed by Trento (+103.9%, from 1,618 to 3,299), Venice (+73.5%, from 2,864 to 4,971) and Naples (+69.1%, from 8,362 to 14,146). Bari, the black jersey in the Sole 24 Ore survey of 25 February, saw a 37.5% increase (from 3,313 to 4,554). Perugia, on the other hand, was among the few cities that experienced a drop in the number of documents issued in April, from 3,814 to 3,372 (-11.6%), in line with the figure calculated from January to 30 April (11,515 passports, against 12,944 in the first four months of 2023).

Umbria is one of the four regional capitals out of twenty in which a decrease in the number of documents has been observed since the beginning of the year compared to the first four months of 2023: the others are Florence, where the number of printed passports fell by 2.9% (and even in April, -0.2%), Cagliari (-2.4%, while last month the increase was 13.3%) and Turin (-2%), where, on the other hand, from January to April, they grew by 12.6% (from 11,631 to 13,102). In total, in the January-April period, documents issued already number 1.088 million, up 19% compared to the first four months of 2023.

The acceleration is particularly evident in some regional capitals. In Naples, it was 71.6%, with passports jumping from 33,227 in 2023 to 57,018 issued this year. In Venice, where 19,267 documents have been issued since January, the growth was 44.8% compared to 13,302 in 2023. Milan improved by 28.2% with 76,164 passports printed since January, but in April alone the increase was 48.3% (from 14,237 to 21,119). Rome also recorded a 21.9% increase in the first four months, from 78,486 to 95,663, with 29,779 printed in April alone (+38.6% compared to the same month in 2023).