In 2007-2013 period Italy would have been entitled to 27,92 billion euros of European funds. We only spent just over 45%, or 13,53 billion, leaving the remaining 14,39 unused. Eurispes reports it in the last study with the data updated to April 2014, also recalling that the time for the expenditure of European subsidies - aimed above all at the South - will expire on 31 December 2015, after which the Union will no longer be bound to disburse the funds which it had allocated for the aforementioned budget period.
Eurispes draws a picture from which Italy emerges anything but flattered. The spending capacity of Italian entities is minimal, causing the loss of an amount of funding equal to one percentage point of 2013 GDP, or more than three Imu. There is a "chronic lag" compared to other European countries where the average expenditure of European funds is around 60%, with peaks of 80% in Lithuania. Only Romania at 37% and Croatia at 22% are doing worse – which however has just joined the Union.
The cause of such negligence is to be found, the study always points out, in "organisational deficiencies (non-execution of projects), bureaucratic inefficiencies, inability to present projects assessed as appropriate". Most of this €14,39 billion should have been allocated to the Convergence objective, namely those disadvantaged regions such as Calabria, Campania, Puglia, Sicily – that is, all of the south.
In fact, the spending capacity of institutions in the south stands at over 45%, while the northern regions boast an implementation rate of 59%, in any case below the European average. Given, the latter, which contributes to exacerbate North-South differences and to widen the gap that keeps the two halves of the country ever more distant. All this with the result of achieving the opposite objective to that desired by European policies: damaging intra-state and international regional cohesion.
Attachments: The Eurispes study
