The difficulty comes now. While the government and the administrative structures are working, not without problems, to implement the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, the reforms that should have accompanied the Italian Recovery Plan are struggling to make their way in Parliament and in the political agenda of the executive.
This is the case, for example, of the draft law on competition, officially approved by the Council of Ministers at the beginning of November but only recently reached the Senate, where it was assigned to the Industry Committee on 23 December. “We will leave only after the holiday break and it is really difficult to imagine that we can get to the heart of it before the election of the new Head of State”, commented Carmine Fotina in this regard this morning.from the pages of Sole 24 Ore.
A hiccup trend that is certainly not limited to just the competition law, on the contrary. From this point of view, we cannot forget the reform of the code of public contracts, which is essential so that public investments, in particular those destined for works and infrastructures, can contribute significantly to the growth of the Italian GDP, whose good performances in 2021 are to be attributed primarily to the growth of private investment. That is, to carry out the public works and infrastructures also provided for by the NRP, which the country has such a deep need, it is necessary – as is widely recognized by experts – to radically put a hand to the system of rules, which currently governs the sector of tenders in Italy, launched in 2016.
A need already known before the pandemic but which the health emergency has officially certified, as has also been confirmed by the Italian plan for the Recovery Fund and by the indications of the government. The related draft law, which should form the basis on which the new procurement code is based, was approved by the Council of Ministers last June 30 and began its parliamentary process before the summer break, at the Public Works Commission of the Senate. Speakers the Cinquestelle Andrea Cioffi and the Northern League player Simona Pergreffi .
Numerous hearings in this regard were conducted between October and November but, apart from that, the provision remained where it was, without any appreciable step forward. Of course, in the meantime various changes have been introduced to the current legislation – think for example of the so-called Simplification Bis decree, which has provided significant news on the subject – but the project for the complete rewriting of the procurement code has not yet seen the light.
“At this rate we can bet that the enabling law will not be approved by the end of the legislature,” a majority parliamentarian who knows the public works sector in depth told Formiche.net. Doubt that it would become certainty, obviously, in the hypothesis, but certainly unlikely at the moment, that the election of the President of the Republic would lead to the fall of the government and the early end of the legislature. In this context, we are told that the hypothesis put forward, among others, by the President of the Antitrust, Roberto Rustichelli , of temporarily suspending the application of the procurement code in favor of the European directives on the subject may even return to the track. .
As the report to the delegated law currently being examined by the Senate clearly explains, the provision aims to overcome the enormous application difficulties caused by the 2016 code approved by the then government led by Matteo Renzi – the competent minister was Graziano Delrio – and to render the discipline is once again clear and organic after the numerous changes that have taken place in recent years, from the corrective decree of 2017 to the Unblocking Cantieri of 2019 up to the aforementioned Simplifications Bis.
Among the main objectives pursued by the bill, there are “the qualification of contracting authorities, with their numerical reduction”, the reduction “to a minimum of administrative and bureaucratic burdens” for public administrations and economic operators, promotion ” of alternative dispute resolution methods to judicial ones ”and the extension“ of forms of public-private partnership ”. And again, or better above all, “to reduce and make certain the times for tenders, for the stipulation of contracts and for the realization of public works” through a long series of simplifications that can no longer be postponed.
General principles to which the detailed legislation dictated by the government must then follow, to be approved by legislative decree within six months of the enactment of the enabling law, which will constitute the new procurement code. According to what was stated in the first government report to Parliament on the PNRR, “the delegation for the reform of the public procurement code” will be approved by 30 June 2022 “while for the entry into force of the relative legislative decrees, a deadline is foreseen of 30 March 2023 “. So there is still time, but we must hurry.
“It is clear that the Chambers for the approval of the law and the Government for the preparation of legislative decrees are required to equip themselves to meet all the deadlines, which are imposed on Italy as a whole and therefore require the overcoming of any timeframe that is incompatible with the commitments undertaken with the NRP ”, reads the same report on the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The risk of slipping too far, therefore, exists and must be avoided at all costs. If not now, when
