Ponte sullo Stretto, why Anac insists on the new tender

The open front on the Strict Strait Bridge, the13.5 billion project that the government, Salvini in the lead, has been wanting to build for four years now with mixed fortunes, especially on the legal front, is not closing. The aim today is to rush to lay the foundation stone by the end of the parliamentary term, but without forcing the hand, without tearing it up. They are working belly to belly to rewrite a resolution that this time will meet with the approval of the accounting magistrates. And they are starting again from the documentary dossier: the Ministry of Infrastructure, with the support of the concessionaire company and the other administrations, has initiated the key steps: request for an opinion from the Superior Council of Public Works, involvement of the Transport Regulatory Authority, definition of the new Programme Agreement to be submitted to the Court of Auditors and prosecution of the dialogue with the European Commission.

The road, however, is still uphill and starts with the Commissioners' Decree that has put the process back on track for the various steps, from the Cipess onwards. After the 24 March hearing in the Senate Environment Commission, the Anti-Corruption Authority led by Giuseppe Busia sent to Parliament its observations on the decree and the restart of the work. It is a 20-page document that goes into detail, point by point, on the remarks already anticipated by President Giuseppe Busìa: doubts about European compatibility, perplexities about the financial structure, sharp criticism of the method chosen by the government. On the other hand, the Stretto di Messina company, the concessionaire of the work, rejects the accusations and claims the legal soundness of the system.

The deepest crack remains the one already highlighted at the hearing: the lack of competition. For the Authority, "doubts remain unresolved regarding compatibility with European legislation", starting with Article 72 of the procurement directive (the 24 of 2014), which in black and white establishes a threshold of 50% of the price of the work beyond which the project can no longer be restarted but a new tender must be called. The point is technical but diriment and was one of the issues on which the Court of Auditors beat most strongly in the resolution with which it sent back the project for the work at the end of last year: the reactivation of the 2003 contracts, accompanied by a profound update of the costs and conditions, constitutes a 'substantial modification' that would have required a new competitive procedure. It is here that the observations sent to Parliament probe the issue of numbers. For Anac, the correct reference remains the original value of the work, around 4 billion. Instead, the government takes the 8.5 billion updated in 2011 as the basis. A choice that "ends up applying the 50% limit not to the initial contract", but to a value that has already been doubled. In other words, there is a risk of exceeding European limits. The concession company retorts on this point with a clear line. "The updating of the general contractor's consideration," the company explains, "is the result, almost exclusively, of the application of price indexation clauses already envisaged in the original 2006 contract," with a passage from 3.9 billion to 10.5 billion explained by inflation and not by new works. Not only: "Variants for works," explains the company led by Pietro Ciucci, "are to be assessed individually" and not cumulatively, so they do not affect the 50% ceiling.

 But let's move on. The second battleground is the financial structure. Here the authority's criticism is even more political than technical. The shift from a model with a strong private presence (project finance) to fully public financing "constitutes a substantial change" that alters the balance of the contract. In essence, the State has now taken on the risk. A profile that the concessionaire rejects, pointing out that "the tender only concerned the selection of the general contractor" and not a public-private partnership. Not only that, however. Because Anac also challenges the boundaries placed on the opinion of the Superior Council of Public Works. "It follows from this," the document notes, "that the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport should not limit itself to forwarding the designer's report to the Council, but should also submit the entire executive project to the technical body's examination, in keeping with what was established in the 1997 opinion and with the need to ensure a full, updated and technically well-founded assessment of the work.

On the procedural level, Anac also raises its sights on the method. The decision to intervene with a decree-law to implement the findings of the Court of Auditors is not convincing. "It 'does not seem agreeable' because these are aspects that could have been managed with ordinary administrative acts . The risk evoked is that of 'stiffening the system' and multiplying litigation.