The opportunity to restart work on the country’s infrastructure involves and brings together those operating in the transport and services sector, public administrators and those who use it. Infrastructure is also key to the aims of the Juncker plan and the 300 billion Euros of European public money it contemplates spending. That said, not all those concerned are speaking with one voice: new infrastructure might well be seen as necessary by many, but they do not believe it is enough to ensure that the country’s growth will be kick-started. There are, therefore, three fundamental questions that need to be asked before committing to investing, once again, in infrastructure, namely: what needs to be built, how should it be built and how should the building be funded?
Decisions about what infrastructure works are needed in Italy are not always taken by the bodies that benefit directly from them, but the procedural difficulties they incur, and the ways in which decisions are made condition how the Italian segments of major European projects are integrated with national, regional and local situations. In many cases, the infighting and competitiveness between local and regional communities is a direct result of the fact that in reality, they were excluded from the decision making process that still remains a prerogative of national and / or European executive.
Against this background, when the time comes to decide which infrastructure works would support the country’s strategic vision, there is always a risk that it is the interests of large business groups that will prevail or that the program is simply based on the notion that extending the national infrastructure is something that its always necessary anyway. It is however an unavoidable decision if one compares Italy’s situation with that in Europe generally, although it is also true that the country’s shortcomings lie not so much in what it does, or does not have, but rather the service – or services – that infrastructure can deliver in answer to the real and varying demand for it / them in different areas of the country.
The length of time the decision making process takes (the rules on tendering have approximately 700 clauses) make any particular infrastructure obsolete from the time it is built, which prejudices the efficiency of national connections to the European infrastructure network and its relationship to major hubs in Italy’s own metropolitan areas. As a result, when talking about the potential and most appropriate ways in which to build new infrastructure, innovative planning and productive technology is often mentioned but rarely actually happens.
Up until now, when it comes to infrastructure, the role of the main stakeholders has been to act as private regulators and to guarantee constancy and certainty in abiding by the rules. But it is difficult to achieve conditions of legality and transparency on that issue, especially if regulations are established on the basis of what is expected to happen in the future rather than on the situation at the time decisions are made. A way of sanctioning rash behavior needs to be found, and not just when dealing with businesses that start thinking about the appeals they will make against any sanctions from the very day they are awarded a contract. Those who are in charge of and oversee Administrative Law must also be held to account, as all too often they behave as if the time it takes to carry out a particular project is an irrelevance.
Cooperation between the public and private sectors is today a determining and indispensible condition for funding infrastructure. As so many procedures actually incur payment of a fee, greater clarity of the roles and especially the limitations imposed on those involved would make it easier for everyone – particularly administrations – to understand. Given the precarious perception of the regulations, there is a risk that the repayment of capital could also be seen as something that exacerbates the difficulties incurred by the entire process, from the scheduling, designing and building of infrastructure.