Venice – For once Genoa and Venice are allies, as has rarely happened in the history of the two maritime republics. And the Serenissima would like to celebrate the 1,600th anniversary of its foundation by looking at the Genoa model. This is how Marco Bucci, mayor of the Ligurian capital, leads the dance: «The Genoa model is exportable» he says in connection: «Those who work in the private sector take risks every day. It is not clear why the same should not happen in the public administration. Today we need to build those processes of responsibility and leadership that took place in the reconstruction of Morandi, enhancing the many professionals who work within it and who too often are under-evaluated and under-used ».
Words known in Liguria, but which still sound exotic in the Adriatic. Because on the Federagenti stage in the assembly – the association of shipping agents – there is also and above all the Venice question. Cruise ships, the Giudecca Canal, temporary landings and dredging: the great enemy, even in the North East, is the bureaucracy.
This is why Alessandro Santi, the man who took over the helm of the maritime agents, is asking for a “war cabinet in peacetime” to overcome the rocks on the route of recovery. It is not the usual convention accusation, because this time there are billions of the NRP at stake. «We have to spend more than 200 billion in about 2000 days and Europe will give us the resources according to the progress of the work. If the construction sites do not start, those resources will not be there – he says Raffaella Paita, chairman of the Transport Committee of the Chamber -. We must therefore simplify, returning to the European directives on the subject of contracts ». We must move forward on simplification rules, also for all the other works not of the NRP, with commissioners, de-bureaucratization and disincentive mechanisms of appeals that block the works ».
Not only that: money may not always be well spent. The president of Confitarma, Mario Mattioli, thunders against the provision that provides for funding for the renewal of the passenger fleet: “Because money is scarce and because in the end limiting the possibility of accessing funds to those operating in the Mediterranean area, not all right. Shipping has an international vocation: if one of our ships is en route to the Pacific or the Atlantic, the environmental account is presented to us anyway ».
Shipping agents and shipowners are in revolt. Because, Mattioli also reasons, after more than 10 years of losses, now the focus is on the balance sheets of the companies. However, the time has come to ask for unprecedented national emergency measures able to guarantee the accessibility of the ports both from the sea (many ports are blocked due to insufficient dredging of the seabed) and from the land (Genoa besieged by trucks and from damaged highways). And this letter too, with the request for a war cabinet to restart the Italian ports, bears the signature of Santi.
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