All discussing how to ‘spend’ the famous 209 billion.……. Is this a unique opportunity? Definitely. Should they be used to finally give a new impetus to the country Italy after the shock lockdown? Certainly. Will they be the result of a broad consultation between all the stakeholders involved? Hopefully.I would just like to underline a few aspects that, in our role as advisors to public authorities, we experience daily in contact with local areas and administrations:
Let us remember the spirit that has always characterised the philosophy of non-repayable funding: it is an incentive and not an end in itself; for every Community euro we “must” multiply the investments we make by 3. Otherwise, we are only burdening future generations with an unsustainable burden.
Beware of scattered funds. The fear, as has already happened in recent months, is that indiscriminate funding will arrive, the result of an unquestionable impulse towards generosity and strategic issues (schools, fibre, energy efficiency, the digital network, soft mobility) but of poor planning that does not consider the timescales and structural shortcomings of the peripheral administrations. Examples? Funding lost because there was not enough physical and bureaucratic time to comply with the procedures for accessing the Funds, undersized (i.e., not enough for a specific project) or oversized non-repayable funding. If this happens in the case of Recovery, it is estimated that almost 30% of the funds received will be used inefficiently (not to say wasted).
We prepare local administrations. More than 70% of municipal technical and administrative departments (especially for municipalities with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants) already suffer from a lack of staff or totally inadequate tools, not to mention the weight of often embarrassing bureaucratic procedures. How can they be expected to withstand the impact over the next five years of a mass of formalities, preliminary investigations, permits, and the launching of tender procedures that will inevitably be needed to “spend” part of the resources made available? Let us think about it, because even the most important infrastructures of national interest will have to reckon with local administrations in the execution phase for one reason or another.
To sum up: The Recovery Fund is the light at the end of the tunnel, a precious seed of the highest quality; but our grandparents in the fields, to make the most of their seeds, prepared the land with care, sowed at the right times, irrigated, and fertilised the soil. Let us bear this in mind, sowing is not enough.
