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Italy’s recovery and resilience plan: how to strengthen and accelerate the implementation phase

  • Milan
  • 16 November 2022

        XXIV Annual Meeting of the Friends of Aspen

        After two years of planning, the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) has reached the point of implementation, with distributions going to local agencies that are now tasked with administering the funds. This undertaking is not devoid of problems associated with technical and administrative capacities. While on the one hand Italy is among the countries leading the definition of objectives and requesting installments from Europe, at the same time it is saddled with the age-old difficulty getting projects off the ground; indeed, according to a government update, only 15 billion of the 39 billion allotted has been spent.

        In this sense the PNRR must trigger a revolution in a public administration that has been drained of resources and skills in the recent past. Some initiatives have proven effective, starting with Capacity Italy, an assistance platform designed to place skills at the service of the territory, and which is the start of a major administrative organizational reinforcement that can be a lasting part of the plan’s legacy.

        Two additional efforts need to be added to this: an institutional bolstering aimed at true collaboration founded on the principle of subsidiarity originating with European institutions and reaching all the way down to local municipal levels; and a financial bolstering based on the joint use of all the resources available to Italy at this moment. Indeed, the PNRR is only a portion of an overall 370 billion that also includes ordinary European funds and cohesion funds. The various projects must necessarily all go in the same direction, avoiding duplications and incompatibility, in order to maximize the measure’s effect.

        The PNRR, then, also offers a new look at national public administrations. In fact, this is not a fund destined merely to offset costs, but rather an instrument to be awarded on the basis of individual country performance. Thus, the creation of intangible assets – skills first and foremost – must be one of the cornerstones of recovery and one of the plan’s main legacies. The goal being to create a digital, sustainable and inclusive Italy capable of becoming a European benchmark. Moreover, in addition to being the major beneficiary of the funds, Italy has also garnered Europe’s highest assessment of projects presented.

        The success of the Italian plan thus becomes the indispensable condition for launching the EU onto a new path in the creation of European public assets. This path was first undertaken with the Junker Plan and was recently enhanced with measures for responding to the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, which is radically changing the face of the Union.

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