Raffaele Fitto Festival of Trento 2
Hypothesis of simultaneously paying the third and fourth installments to the government in the second half of this year, for a total of 35 billion euros
Agreement reached on the problem of beds in university student accommodation, which should unlock – albeit months later – the third installment of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The site writes it Corriere della Sera. The understanding that the Minister of European Affairs Raffaele Fitto presented today to the Pnrr control room, which lasted only 15 minutes, is articulated in several stages to solve a basic problem: according to the European Commission, Italy had failed to reach the quantitative objective set to add 7,500 beds in student accommodation by the end of 2022. The government has always said it is convinced it has satisfied this request but, according to Brussels, part of the beds was pre-existing and should not have been counted in the funding.
On this issue the parties have been stuck, literally, for months. Now comes a compromise similar to the one reached on nursery schools, where the dispute from Brussels regarding the fourth installment (June 2023 objectives) had been similar: part of the funds risked going to renew existing nursery places. The compromise is as follows: the quantitative goal of creating 7,500 places in student accommodation by the end of 2022 will disappear; in its place there will be a qualitative objective, relating to having launched all the necessary procedures (tenders, authorisations) for Italy to create an overall number of 60,000 more university beds by the end of 2026. Furthermore, this qualitative objective will no longer be linked to the deadlines of the third installment (December 2022), but to those of the fourth installment (June 2023).
In this way, the payment of the third installment will be made without taking into account the sums linked to the creation of student residences. However, that portion of the funds (between 300 and 500 million euros, depending on the interpretation) will be integrated into the objectives of the fourth installment and paid with it, provided that the conditions are met. Therefore, overall, the sums paid to Italy for the implementation of the Pnrr would be unchanged. There would be too the hypothesis of simultaneously paying the third and fourth installments to the government in the second half of this year, for a total of 35 billion euros (on paper today the third installment is worth 19 billion and the fourth is worth 16) or, in an alternative that seems much more probable, an attempt will be made to disburse the third installment as soon as possible and also the fourth within the year, for a total of 35 billion which therefore overall would not change.
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