Conte's idea of a technical structure made up of ben 300 super experts which should manage, under the guidance of a committee made up of the Prime Minister and two ministers, the projects to be presented in Brussels to obtain the money from the Recovery Fund, was greeted with skepticism, irony, or even open hostility by most commentators and political parties. However the criticisms don't seem to have hit the mark: often it was a matter of defending the existing ministerial structures or of the Municipalities and Regions which risk being cut off not only from the choices of political priorities but also from the management of concrete projects.
The confused controversy did not allow for an in-depth debate to take off on the merits of the governance problems and on the choices that the country must make if it wants to use fully and in the best possible way the resources made available by Europe which are higher than those of the famous Marshall plan. And which, as happened after the war, could trigger a new phase of development of the economy and of the entire society.
Instead, we must start from the recognition that Conte's intention to create a well-structured control room capable of managing quickly projects financed by Europe, is a step forward towards that institutional set-up which, as many have invoked from many quarters, could allow efficient management of the use of available resources.
But, there is a but as big as a house that leaves us perplexed both on the method and on the merits of what the Government actually wants to do. The distinction between the role of politics and that of the technical structure is not clear. Who will have to select the projects (it is said about 600) that the various state administrations, central and peripheral, have sent to the Prime Minister? What will be the task of politics, that of indicating the general directives, i.e. choosing the major intervention options, which the technical structure will then be responsible for putting into practice, or that of directly choosing individual projects and thus giving priority to those that do they appear more urgent from a political point of view, ie from the search for electoral consensus, even if they are not consistent with the objective of improving competitiveness and growth?
But precisely in order not to clarify these fundamental points and at the same time to avoid the assault on diligence by the various central and peripheral administrations, Prime Minister Conte seems intent on carrying out what Giorgio La Malfa defines a real "institutional coup" passing the birth of this new body into an amendment to be included in the finance law which, as has happened in recent years, will in the end be approved with a vote of confidence without a real parliamentary discussion. In this way it will not be possible to clarify the positions of the various parties and make public opinion aware of the methods of managing the available resources and the objectives to be achieved.
After months in which this whole affair was cloaked in a veil of mystery, during which it was not possible to concretely discuss the relationship between objectives and means, to let everything pass without a real debate in Parliament and in the country as well as being an institutional overthrow, does not appear to be the best way to activate all the best energies which are indispensable for decree the success of such a demanding rebirth program. It would be better if, immediately after the approval of the budget, a "special" parliamentary session were held to discuss both how to organize oneself to manage the Recovery Fund, and the choices that will be up to politics in its various articulations as well as, obviously, the choices of the priority.
It's clear that we need an ad hoc structure to manage European funds. On the other hand, it is a complex project work that the Public Administration is unable to manage. Furthermore it is necessary to go beyond the ordinary legislation in procurement with special derogations pending an amendment to the ordinary legislation which is urgent, but which will require considerable time to become operational. But first of all it is important to clarify that the role of politics cannot be that of the direct project manager.
Politics is called to make great choices both in setting up reforms (PA, Justice, Training and Innovation, the labor market), and in setting the rules for selecting projects, as well as obviously monitoring and controlling execution and financial management . And instead Prime Minister Conte, with this of his somewhat carbonaro way of managing, just tries to escape from clarifying some thorny political problems (think of Health, the labor market, Justice), and above all to keep in hand the cue for the selection of the main projects.
A selection that, it seems, will above all favor large state-owned companies (in transport, energy, digitization, green economy) also because in the public sphere they are the only ones who know how to make projects with the accuracy that Brussels requires to approve them. AND this too is a choice full of consequences for the structure of the Italian production system. Keeping private companies on the sidelines after the success of exports is owed to them above all is certainly not a far-sighted choice from either an economic or a political point of view.
