. The new mayor of the Italian capital will count on the European ‘manna’ to reactivate a city with decades of decadence
Roberto Gualtieri, elected this week in the second round of the municipal elections as the new mayor of Rome, has won a lottery to which his predecessors were not entitled: to guide the most populated and complicated city in Italy with enough money to try to get it out of its structural problems, such as the disastrous management of garbage, the insufficient public transport system or the multiplication of potholes in the streets. To solve these basic challenges in any other major European city and try to project the Italian capital into the future, Gualtieri, from the progressive Democratic Party (PD), will have the 1,500 million euros of public money that will be allocated to the Jubilee of 2025, an event in which millions of pilgrims from around the world are expected to participate. The investments linked to this Holy Year, together with those necessary to organize the Universal Exhibition that Rome hopes to host in 2030, may mark a turning point and end the decadence that the Italian capital has suffered for decades.
«There is an almost miraculous situation that we hope will fix the serious problems of the city. Gualtieri has aligned the planets », explains Mario Ajello, journalist for the Roman newspaper ‘Il Messaggero’ and author of ‘Capital Disaster. Rome at the crossroads’. Unlike what happened with the previous mayor, Virginia Raggi, of the 5-Star Movement (M5E), who could count on little collaboration from other institutions, the opposite will happen to the new councilor. Today the PD controls the town hall, the regional government and 14 of the 15 territorial demarcations into which Rome is divided. Gualtieri also enjoys a good relationship with the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, whose Executive is also supported by the PD. “Let’s hope that the new mayor will be able to take advantage of this union of forces,” says Ajello.
Money will not be a problem because the capital expects 221.5 billion from European funds for reforms
Money, for the first time in decades, will not be a problem because the capital hopes to be one of the great beneficiaries of the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience (PNRR), the ambitious 221.5 billion euro reform program that Draghi presented to Brussels therefore, to a large extent, is financed with European aid to overcome the crisis caused by the pandemic. “It is a great opportunity for Rome, although it must be seized. We have already seen other missed opportunities in the past, ”says Mattia Diletti, professor of Political Science at La Sapienza University in Rome. “Gualtieri, who was Minister of Economy in the previous Government, will try to personally monitor how these funds are spent. He is a person with the technical competence to do so, although he will have to face the conflict with the great interests of various kinds that exist in the city and that, on many occasions, hinder decision-making, ”warns the university professor.
This is a reality well known to Marco Bettini, a journalist and writer who for almost a year and a half held the position of head of the press office for Ignazio Marino, Raggi’s predecessor as mayor of Rome. Known as El Marciano for his position outside of politics, Marino was the victim of those difficult balances between the more or less hidden powers that govern the city, to the point that he was ousted by the PD, the party that had chosen him as a candidate. .
Structural problem
“Gualtieri will have the opportunity to spend and he may do well, but the situation in Rome is not fixed with money alone. There is a mentality problem and a structural one, because many powers coincide here: the Government, the Parliament, the large public companies, the parties, the Vatican, the embassies … It does not matter what the figure or the party of the mayor is: who governs this city has to learn to live with this system of power or choose to fight it, but that means that they will try to eliminate you politically because these groups vindicate their privileges with ferocity “, says Bettini, author of ‘Roma Kaputt: unpublished revelations, scandals and hidden truths of a city on the edge of the precipice ‘.
Another of Gualtieri’s strengths is that, unlike what happened to Marino and Raggi, he has a party based in the territory and that supports him. It will have to achieve, yes, that the eternal internal struggles within the PD are not reopened while controlling that the ‘manna’ of money that is expected in the coming years does not cause a corruption scandal like that of ‘Mafia Capital’. That criminal network, dismantled in 2014, was infiltrated in the city council to control the management of public contracts.
«The decline of Rome is not irreversible. If Gualtieri manages to solve everyday problems and achieve a more livable city, he will return to the Romans the pride of living in a European capital that works and that has a projection that goes beyond its history, responding to their demands for greatness, “he says. Ajello. Professor de la Sapienza believes that it is still too early to think of a “great leap into the future” of the Eternal City. “Romans want to live better by starting with simple things: having their garbage collected, the bus arriving and fixing potholes in the street. If Gualtieri achieves that, he will be successful. Rome has degraded so much in recent years that the public asks little. It is necessary to feed the dreams, but I do not see this mayor generating fantasies.
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