Close the institutions considered useless. The commissioner for the spending review, Carlo Cottarelli, is planning a titanic undertaking, bordering on the impossible, if one only considers that the problem of thinning out useless or duplicative structures has been dragging on for half a century. A jungle that currently includes 173 entities, to which we must add the 27 professional orders, for which, however, the cut has been expressly excluded by law. In total, therefore, 200 entities.
The point of reference can be considered the law n.14 of the now distant 1978. Since then various regulations have followed one another: to stop at the present day, the Budget Laws of 2002, the one of 2007, the following one, the law 122/ 2010 up to the decrees 201/2011 and 95/2012 on simplification and now the spending review.
The entity-cutting regulations have so far led to the suppression of about fifty state non-economic public institutions and institutions, while another 4 have been privatized (the “il Vittoriale degli italiani” foundation, the Vittorio Emanuele lll charitable institution, the Apulian palatine laywomen, Unuci).
But the core of the surviving national public bodies remains, currently estimated at no less than 200 including professional orders (the same official surveys fail to be more precise, also given the different classifications and connotations of public bodies).
Let's try to take a picture. There really is no shortage of curiosities.
Let's start with the Authorities, quite young by birth, having been created in the last few decades. There are 12: Authority for competition and the market, for the protection of personal data, for childhood, for energy, for communications, for transport regulation, for the supervision of public contracts, for the implementation of law on the strike in essential public services, for the transparency of public administrations, for companies and the Stock Exchange, for the supervision of pension funds and for the supervision of insurance companies.
But the lion's share goes to parks and environmental institutes (30), on a par with institutions in the cultural and research area. In this second chapter we go from the historic academies of Crusca and Lincei to Invalsi, from the Cnr to the Anton Dohm zoological station, from the Italian space agency Asi to the evaluation agency of the university system and Anvur research, passing through the institutes of astrophysics and nuclear physics, geophysics and volcanology, oceanography and experimental geophysics, Inrim metrological research. And then a series of other institutes which should be merged but which are awaiting the implementing regulation of the structural unification: council for historical studies, institute of numismatics, institute for the Middle Ages, institute for the modern and contemporary age, for ancient history, for the history of the Risorgimento, the international institute of Garibaldi studies, the Domus mazziniana.
Then the transport and infrastructure chapter, with 28 between port authorities and other entities such as Enac, Ansv, Ansf. Another 15 in the production, commercial and sports area: in addition to entities such as Enit, Enea, Aci, Cai, Coni, the sports credit institute, the Ice list also includes the national test bench for portable firearms and for commercial munitions, the liquefied petroleum gas equalization fund, the electricity sector equalization fund, the foundation of university and advanced studies in tourism. A foundation, the latter, provided for by decree 83/2012, but not yet established.
The list is really long: 5 entities in the defense area, 7 in the finance chapter (state property agency, revenue agency, customs and monopolies agency, financial police officer fund, assistance fund for financiers, employee welfare former Ministry of Finance, pension fund for inspection personnel, note-takers and financiers). And then - in bulk - Isfol, Inal, Inps, the Mauritian order, Istat, the agency for digital Italy, the high school of the judiciary. Finally, the institutions of hospitalization and treatment of a scientific nature, the public Irccs. I'm 20.
