Pnrr, implementation at 57% but for Health expenditure to be accelerated sevenfold

Progress, the NRP. But at every review the gap between the rate of achievement of formal and substantive objectives and the degree of financial realisation, measured by the actual expenditure of Community resources, continues to appear. The gap becomes evident again in the new six-monthly report to Parliament by the Court of Auditors, which, in the deluge of numbers and tables scattered across the document's 290 pages, paints an articulate picture of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan that can be summarised as follows: reforms and works march on, and expenditure trudges on.

A concise indicator of the overall rate of progress achieved by Italy by the end of 2024 can be deduced from the total of the target indicators agreed with the European Commission: on average, 57% of the seven missions have now been achieved, "a result that appears consistent with the current phase of the Plan, characterised by initiatives in the midst of their implementation that are moving towards completion", as the Sections in the control unit point out. This average, the report warns, encompasses within it "very heterogeneous situations of progress of the individual types of measures and indicators", ranging from the peak recorded in those relating to personnel, all of which have been exceeded, to the good performance encountered in the 'connectivity' (71%) and 'training' (70%) strands, down to the 13% recorded in the 'transport' category. Here, inevitably, the greater complexity of the interventions and the consequently longer preparation and planning phases weigh heavily.

The leap in spending, however, still remains confined to the realm of promises. On this point, the accounting magistrates recall the official figure of EUR 63.9 billion exceeded at the end of 2024, with an increase recorded in the last year of only EUR 18.8 billion (+12 percentage points on 2023), which represents only 44% of what was planned in the updated timetable. Here too, more than the averages, the punctual data speak for themselves, broken down by mission, which see the first (digitalisation, innovation, competitiveness, and culture) registering the highest rate of progress, just under 48% of the overall spending path, the third (infrastructures) standing at 37.7%, the second (green revolution) at 36.1%. At the tail end were the fifth (inclusion and cohesion) and sixth (health), below 20 per cent.

In this scenario, the Court of Auditors calculates, 71 per cent of the Plan measures have so far spent less than 25 per cent of the resources available to them, and in 45 per cent of the cases not even a 10 per cent rate of progress is achieved. Even in this case, the averages are the result of diversified trends depending on the implementing entities: some, such as schools and universities, travel at higher speeds (+22.8% and +13.7%, respectively); public companies also show a more lively pace (+7.4%), while below average central administrations and agencies are struggling (-8%); instead, territorial administrations are closer, with a negative variance of 3.2%.

"From this," the Court warns, "emerges clearly the effort required in the last six months of the NRP from all those involved in the implementation of the project initiatives, in order to ensure their finalisation on schedule". Effort that is not equal for all, because the strands furthest behind, starting with 'health', one of the fulcrums of the Plan created to restart after the pandemic shock, 'will have to ensure spending levels that are more than seven times higher than those experienced so far'. A sprint that will have to be concentrated in the more complicated horizon of public works, after that in the first few years the payment counter was also able to use the boost of automatic tax credits for construction and businesses: net of incentives and bonuses, the spending progress figure dropped to 21.9 per cent.