The EU reconstruction plan is a “golden opportunity” for Italy, especially for the south. But when it comes to planning a sewer, the engineers are missing.
Sicily would urgently need irrigation canals, but the application process overwhelmed the officials. This means that part of the EU aid has been wasted, the fields in Sicily remain dry, the canals are being built elsewhere.
31 projects submitted, 31 projects rejected – a slap in the face, a failure. The regional administration in Sicily wanted to improve or expand irrigation systems, funds for such projects are available in the EU development plan, € 880 million can be built across Italy. The applications from Sicily have a volume of € 423 million. But not a single one meets the EU requirements, all fail. This means that part of the EU aid has been wasted, the fields in Sicily remain dry, the canals are being built elsewhere. It is a blatant case of bureaucratic inability, “incapacità burocratica”, but by no means an isolated case.
With the EU development plan € 190 billion in loans and financial aid are available for Italy, of which southern Italy should receive € 80 billion, the government and parliament in Rome have determined. The individual projects must meet certain criteria in terms of content and form, and they must be implemented by the end of 2026. Where there is no concrete stage progress in planning and execution, Brussels does not send any money. But “project management” is a foreign word. The Italian public administration is often unable to perform its tasks efficiently or at all.
“The biggest problem is the lack of qualified staff,” says the newly elected mayor of Naples, Gaetano Manfredi. The city administration could not submit projects for the repair of school buildings and for the construction of day nurseries because it lacks the architects. Especially at the local level and in southern Italy, the public administration lacks skilled workers. The EU development plan relentlessly brings this to light – money is available, but useful projects are lacking.
Fresh forces are being recruited
«Thousands of young, qualified people are now employed, that is in progress. It takes a generation change and a cultural change in public administration. This is the only way to make it efficient. ” That says Aristide Police, Professor of Administrative Law at the Luiss University in Rome. The government of Mario Draghi seized the opportunity for a large wave of recruiting, the suspension of the Maastricht criteria on budgetary discipline made this possible.
The young specialists are to be deployed primarily in the communities – where there is the greatest lack of skills. the Scuola Nazionale dell’Amministrazione is to provide comprehensive training for staff under new management. But the weaknesses of the state apparatus cannot be remedied quickly:
- There is a lack of specialists with higher technical qualifications. This is what is needed at middle management level for the formulation and implementation of infrastructure projects. In Rome, for example, out of 24,000 city employees, only 2,000 graduates, most of whom are lawyers. They don’t build trams.
- Small communities in particular suffer from a lack of staff. Due to austerity measures, the administrative posts that have become vacant have only been partially filled for the past 25 years, and there has been a widespread hiring freeze for 10 years.
- The civil service is generally outdated and not very motivated, as can be seen from the many absences. There is a lack of basic skills, especially in the area of IT. Further training was neglected.
- New hires are often based on opaque criteria instead of ability, although the constitution prescribes recruitment through competition (concorso). Small communities are overwhelmed by the complicated and lengthy process of personnel selection, but also large ones, even Rome, are struggling with the system.
- Wages are not based on performance, and incompetent civil servants are not dismissed. For too long, according to Professor Aristide Police, the unions have campaigned for comprehensive protection against dismissal and for equal pay for everyone, including the lazy. The quality was neglected.
However, Police underlines, there is a solid administrative tradition in parts of the Italian administration and excellent staff, concentrated in a few ministries in Rome. He names the office of the head of government, the finance ministry, the foreign and interior ministries, as well as the upper floors of the judiciary.
External experts under suspicious observation
Some media attention caused a whole team of McKinsey consultants to be flown into Rome. According to the police, these are “a few hundred” people, their influence is overestimated. In principle, there is nothing wrong with the state buying in external expert knowledge. However, the advisors are not allowed to take the place of the civil servants; they alone have to decide. Conflicts of interest could arise when large consulting firms work for public administration and private companies at the same time. So far there have been no suspected cases – but the work of the experts has so far hardly produced any results.
Redirect cash flows
There is often talk of a “golden opportunity” that Italy is getting with the EU reconstruction plan, and it should by no means be wasted. In the south, meanwhile, there are fears that only a fraction of the promised glut of money will arrive due to bureaucratic inability, and in the end they will be left on dry land. Because of the irrigation canals in Sicily, diplomatic canals have now been activated in Brussels. It is hoped that the deadline will be extended so that improved projects can be submitted and approved and money still flows. Advanced training courses for civil servants are offered.
The Italian Anti-corruption agency Anac wants to set up a database that can be used to process all public contracts. The aim is to prevent all that money from flowing away into criminal channels. For the time being, it is still on the fact that the EU authorities will keep a watchful eye, but: “From 2026 we have to do it ourselves”, they say. The EU development plan is intended to permanently eliminate grievances that have been evident for decades.
If the authorities in the south are not able to call up the available funds from Brussels, the flow of money should be diverted from south to north Italy, the mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, is already demanding. This would give the economically strong north an additional boost, while the south would fall even further behind. But this is about internal Italian sensitivities – not a topic of the EU development plan and the EU Commission.
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