In these weeks of intense activity supporting over 200 Italian Municipalities, my CISA colleagues and I have touched upon the needs, hopes and difficulties faced by the Mayors and their Administrations with which we collaborate.
Well, I would like to reflect on the most relevant considerations that emerge from our daily confrontations:
- A widespread fear of failing…. to participate in calls for tenders is often impossible due to their complexity and reaction times that are almost never able to be met. Result? A growing fatalism that leads Municipalities to adopt two attitudes: I’ll leave it alone because I won’t get there …. I do them all something will come along;
- A PNRR platform that is far from simple to interpret (REGIS) and that is not easily and immediately met by assistance. Result? Continuous delays on the work programme and a tendency not to take responsibility;
- A system for disbursing funds that many times leaves local Administrations ‘uncovered’ with respect to the normal practice of paying for work in progress. Result? Those with no budget reserves (i.e. almost none) find themselves having to block procedures or, worse, works;
- Most of the small and medium-sized Municipalities (our interlocutors) do not have adequate technical and administrative structures; most of them have a shortage of staff or trained personnel, technical offices and general secretariats are uncovered, and many make do by sharing functions but without a systemic approach. Result? New projects and new measures to be instructed lead to unsustainable situations of commitment, so better to overlook them;
- These are just some of the voices we have collected, in addition to the endemic anguish of bureaucratic procedures that make every action ‘swampy’ and not at all efficient.
And yet, for almost two years now, the direct accompanying measures to the PNRR and the assistance and control bodies have been determined and structured but… our Municipalities do not feel their presence except in the censorial phase.
Something is not working and risks compromising the whole sequence of project proposal, measure instruction, realization of works and correct reporting. This is a problem that concerns the PNRR but which embraces all the measures supporting municipal Administrations: from European to regional programming, and which also risks slowing down those who try to bring public and private together, creating the hoped-for multiplier effect of the resources to be deployed for purposes of public interest.
Perhaps it would be better if we made more effort to listen to our Mayors and to prepare targeted territorial intervention measures that intercept the criteria and purposes of the NextGenerationEU and of the entire European programme.
We are working on this, in our own small way, and this is why we organise integrated territorial projects in many territories (from Lombardia to Piemonte, from Umbria to Abruzzo, from Campania to Sicilia). They are certainly not the panacea to all problems, but they are certainly a concrete sign that, not by chance, is fully shared with the territories and Municipalities that have embarked on them.
Giuseppe Lombardini
General Manager CISA Consulting
