As Fitto eyes EU role, ex-minister Giovannini calls for stable transition

As EU affairs, cohesion and NRRP Minister Raffaele Fitto was put forward as Italy's choice for the commissioner role, former minister Enrico Giovannini, who penned much of the country's initial recovery and resilience plan, called for a stable transition.

The national recovery plan is the focus of debate in Italy, with the Court of Auditors highlighting in a report published on Monday that 62% of the investments planned under Italy’s recovery plan must be completed in the last eight months of the plan’s implementation in 2026.

During this period, Italy must meet 28% of its targets to receive 19% of the funds.

“The spending indicator is not the primary metric to focus on, as in many cases, the disbursement of the most substantial parts of the spending occurs at the end of the project. This is particularly true for various infrastructure projects, as well as for other initiatives, which will undoubtedly need to accelerate over the next two years,” Giovannini, currently a professor at the University of Rome and director of the Italian Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASviS), told Euractiv in an interview.

In addition to being the minister responsible for drafting much of the national recovery plan as head of sustainable infrastructure and mobility under the Draghi government, Giovannini has been tasked by the Belgian EU Council presidency, along with Draghi and Letta, with drafting a report on revitalising the EU, especially on the social investment side.

According to Giovannini, many alarming reports about Italy’s management of the national plan stem from the fact that the monitoring system cannot track spending in real time.

“We often hear alarming data based on provisional figures from the Economy and Finance Ministry’s Regis system, which are later corrected when the system is updated,” he says. The key indicator “is the progression of design, tendering, and contract awarding -unfortunately, Regis does not capture this, but other databases do,” the former minister added.

Giovannini also noted that the data recently provided by Fitto indicates a much higher volume of activity than the expenditure suggests.

With Fitto’s candidacy - he was responsible for managing the recovery and cohesion policies - there could be challenges in Italy's fund management.

“There is a risk of changes in the management of the NRRP at the governmental level, but it’s not so much about the minister’s figure. There are rumours about the possibility of separating the cohesion funds from the NRRP again,” Giovannini warns.

But this would be a "serious mistake," especially given the effort required to reactivate the recovery plan after Meloni decided to put Fitto in charge of managing both the NRRP and its 2023 revision agreed with the EU.

“Given the time it took to set up this new organisation, another significant change with the tight deadlines we now face - as we’re talking about just under two years - would seriously jeopardise the plan’s feasibility, especially as the 2023 revision focused on many more milestones and targets in the last year than were foreseen in the original plan,” said Giovannini.

Regarding the 2026 deadline, the former minister argues that the real issue is the possibility of repeating a plan like the NRRP.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has spoken about the need to replicate the NextGenerationEU experience, mainly to accelerate the green and digital transformation of key economic sectors and to address defence issues.

Giovannini suggests that if the idea of launching a new plan by 2025 or extending the existing NextGenerationEU initiative were to gain traction among member states - not just to make up for delays, but, as with RepowerEU, to add new chapters with additional funding - “than the discussion would take on a completely different direction.”

“Does Europe want just to be a regulatory entity or also a financier, as is the case in China and the United States? Clearly, if such a discussion arose, the current framework of the PNRR at the European level could be reconsidered, strengthened and eventually extended beyond 2026,” he added.

“We’ll see what the Draghi report, which will be presented in the coming days, has to say, but we already have some indications from his speech at La Hulpe, where Enrico Letta and I also participated presenting my report prepared on behalf of the Belgian presidency. He clearly pointed out the need for stable funding of around €500 billion annually,” Giovannini also said.

(Alessia Peretti | Euractiv.it)