Corriere della Sera and Italia Oggi have published an extract from our report on the Municipalities.
THERE IS MONEY, BUT WE DON'T KNOW HOW TO SPEND IT?
From the PNRR to European funds, the difficulties of the Municipalities on which to intervene
The public debate frequently focuses on the ability of Municipalities to spend PNRR resources. A similar concern concerns the new programming of the European structural funds for 2021-27: will the Municipalities, especially those in the Southern Regions, be able to spend more, sooner and better, the funds from the 2014-20 programming?
The experience on the use of the 2014-20 European funds and the ongoing experience relating to the PNRR provide a truth that was already evident to anyone who wanted to see it, that is insufficient spending capacity demonstrated by many Italian municipalities. The budget indicators have been speaking clearly for some time, as have those that define the administrative capacity, without which even to spend, for any institution, it becomes difficult. It should not be surprising, therefore, that now the issues have come to a head, made evident by the unusual size of the financial resources that the Municipalities find themselves potentially available thanks to the PNRR and the new European seven-year programming.
The concern concerns not so much the provincial capital municipalities: here, the ordinary spending capacity for only one municipality (Avellino) falls below 40%; it is the smaller municipalities that are alarming: not all, of course, but many. This is the case of municipalities where the indicator just exceeds 4%, like Celle San Vito, in the province of Foggia, whose inhabitants do not reach 150. Despite its almost three thousand inhabitants, not even San Leucio del Sannio goes much further (Benevento), which has a spending percentage of 7%. On the other hand, there are also municipalities like Aielli, in the province of Chieti, which with just over a thousand inhabitants shows a very high spending capacity (98%), followed by another Abruzzo municipality, with 1,346 inhabitants (Castilenti) it's almost the 97% there spending capacity
Average spending capacity of Municipalities by province (%)
Source: Fondazione Etica-REP processing on BDAP data
