Competition law: time is running out. The first of the four annual measures envisaged by the National Recovery and Resilience Plan must be presented to Parliament by July. Missing this deadline would mean being late on the roadmap established with Europe to obtain the funds of the Next Generation Eu, moreover in the days in which Italy will receive the first money transfer from Brussels (about 25 billion, equal to 13% of the funds allocated for our country).
The confrontation between the men of Palazzo Chigi and the technicians of the ministries has been going on for weeks, but it seems that in recent issues the work of drafting the draft has slowed down precisely because of the requests of some ministries. However, it is not excluded that in the end the text of the competition law will manage to arrive in the Council of Ministers just before the summer break, also because Prime Minister Draghi has given his personal guarantee to Brussels on all the reforms connected to the Next Generation EU and does not compromise.
As regards the contents, the government should largely follow the suggestions of the Antitrust, which sent a 60-page document with about 80 proposals to Palazzo Chigi. The list of topics is extremely varied: from ports to local public services, from gas to electric cars, passing through dams.
PORTS
The theme of ports could be part of a broader discussion on tenders and concessions, two macro-chapters on which intervention has already begun with the enabling law on public contracts, which in this case the law on competition could integrate. The fundamental issue is the ban on the extension of concessions in some sectors, in compliance with the European rules on assignments en casa. The upcoming bill could remove the obstacles that today do not allow port concessionaires to associate activities in large and medium-sized ports. Furthermore, concessionaires could be allowed to provide port services themselves using their own equipment.
LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES
On the local public services front, the most eagerly awaited novelty is the rationalization of the rules for recourse to the awarding procedure en casa. The new rule should oblige local administrations to provide in advance a well-substantiated reason to explain the failure to use the tender. Furthermore, in local public transport, the aim is to favor unions between Municipalities, so as to reduce the number of contracting entities and administrations. Finally, the procedures for authorizing waste management plants could also be simplified.
GAS
The government would also like to include in the law on competition a system of incentives for the launch of public procedures in terms of tenders for gas distribution. On this front, however, the resistance of the Municipalities has to be overcome.
ELECTRIC CARS
Much easier should be the creation of new rules to disseminate public columns for recharging electric vehicles. In the Recovery Plan, the government has set the goal of building at least 7.500 charging points on highways and another 13.750 in urban centres. With the law on competition, the executive aims to set transparent criteria for assigning operators the spaces in which to install the columns.
DAMS
Finally, the dams. The government could address the issue of hydroelectric concessions with two main objectives: to set general and uniform criteria at national level and to oblige the Regions to establish the economic criteria at the basis of the duration of the concession contracts. The problem will be overcoming the opposition of the Northern League governors, given that it was Matteo Salvini's party - at the time of the yellow-green majority - that obtained the regionalization of the dams.
