Pnrr spending rises to over 40%. Seventh instalment coming

Expenditure on NRP projects accelerates in early 2025. The financial advancement is not yet at a real turning point, so much so that it was the premier Giorgia Meloni herself who called the ministers to greater speed in view of the deadlines. Compared to the trend up to the end of 2024, however, progress is visible. The latest available data, updated to 31 May 2025, are contained in the articulate dossier that the Chamber's Study Service has dedicated to the implementation of the Plan: about 79 billion euro have been spent, thus reaching over 40 per cent of the 194.4 billion in total resources available to Italy. In December 2024, the expenditure, according to the Court of Auditors, stood at just under EUR 64 billion, or 33% of the European funding.

Consultation of the ReGiS database of the State General Accounting Office also shows that, as of 1 July 2025, approximately 299,000 projects had been submitted, of which 125,000 had already been completed and 174,000 were still in progress. Looking at targets and objectives, 374 out of a total of 614 have been achieved since the start of NRP implementation. 240 remain to be achieved in the last two semesters, of which 177 relate to the last semester with a deadline of 30 June 2026. An appeal in this regard came from the Minister for European Affairs, the NRP and Cohesion Policies, Tommaso Foti, who called on "those who know they cannot implement" the projects to give up, recalling that otherwise "they will be held jointly and severally liable".

The Chamber's study, circulated just as the delegation of the European Parliament's working group on the NRP is visiting Italy in these days, takes stock of the whole of the past: so far, it is recalled, the European Commission has disbursed EUR 122.2 billion to Italy, considering the 270 targets and objectives set in the past six semesters for the payment of the previous six instalments to have been reached. The figure represents a record in Europe, but should be assessed considering that Italy is also the largest recipient of European grants and loans. In second place is Spain with EUR 163 billion allocated and around EUR 48 billion disbursed. The EUR 122.2 billion includes the initial pre-financing of EUR 24.9 billion (disbursed on 13 August 2021) and the pre-financing of EUR 0.5 billion (disbursed on 25 January 2024) related to the integration of the REPowerEU chapter in the NRP. With regard to the seventh instalment, the government had already submitted the payment request on 30 December 2024.

After the recent changes to the NRP, the European Commission approved the preliminary assessment of the 18.3 billion instalment request on 1 July 2025. Minister Foti announced that it will most likely be settled on Monday. On 30 June, the government also sent the Commission a request for the payment of the eighth instalment, amounting in this case to 12.8 billion, considering the targets and objectives to be achieved by the first half of 2025. Thus, counting the targets and objectives of the seventh and eighth instalments, 374 targets and objectives have been achieved. Missing from the list are the ninth instalment, which has a total of 64 targets and objectives, and the tenth instalment, which has 176.