At the end of 55 major projects presented to the European Union, Italy has closed only 19. Twenty-five can still stand until 2020 and eleven can only be completed with national funds. Of those with a prevalent environmental impact for the South – the ports of Naples and Salerno, the reclamation of the Campi Flegrei – are in progress. The budget, therefore, is not exciting. The Oper Coesione portal has announced the state of implementation of major projects of European value supported by the Cohesion Policy. And we are talking about the period 2007-2013. The report was made in March, which in summary tells us that something (more than something) didn't work. Many expectations have been frustrated and not only for the central government, but for local institutions and companies interested in contracts and works. Major Community projects are those with an investment of at least 50 million euros.
The Italian roadmap was respected for 19 years, sacrificing important works for the revitalization of vast areas. Something has been done for broadband in Calabria, Campania and Lombardy, some Apulian and Calabrian railway lines, road connections in Sicily. But one cannot be satisfied when long-term development policies rely on this project that remains unfinished. The only two possibilities left to see benefits are the 2014-2020 EU programming and the financing with Italian resources of the remaining 11 projects. But on March 31, 2019 the deadline for the end of the works expires. The procedures, meanwhile, remain complex and laborious. The Italian authorities have complained in Brussels, but the effectiveness so far has been limited. From the South, one gets the feeling that the meaning of these interventions is not fully understood. In fact they are the economic driving force of sectors such as the environment, energy, soil protection and technologies. The spending capacity and the acceleration of the works should be as extreme as possible.
And in the wake of some territorial emergencies, the projects brought to Brussels at the beginning were 76. Only then 22 were rejected. Those financed are worth 95,4 billion and also include 13,3 billion of regional, provincial and municipal resources. The economist Gianfranco Viesti in one of his recent studies argued that in the South of Italy the national cohesion policy has fallen to an all-time low since 2014. In the period 2014-2020, a further 54,8 billion euros would be available for the southern regions. But the figure becomes theoretical when we witness the slow spending capacity and the ability to put resources to good use. Even more if we discover that major projects account for 20% of the overall budget of the European Regional Development Fund programmes. Their impact on vital sectors is driving industrial sectors in asphyxiation under normal conditions. Those that are often unusual in the South.
