Agrigento, agricultural company appeal upheld. Inail will have to grant funds

AGRIGENTO (ITALPRESS) – The Regional Administrative Court of Palermo has accepted the appeal of an agricultural entrepreneur who had been excluded from Inail financing due to an error in completing the application. In March 2021, Inail had started a procedure for granting financing to agricultural businesses for the purchase of new machinery and equipment with innovative solutions to reduce polluting emissions. The financing was envisaged in the amount of 50% of the eligible expenditure, for young farmers (even organized in corporate form) and 40%, for the generality of micro and small businesses. PG, a twenty-eight year old from Naro (Agrigento), legal representative of the family farm, had participated in the tender, requesting admission, with a request for financing equal to 50%. In August 2021, Inail had authorized the financing, but in January 2022 it had communicated the reduction from 50 to 40% – “as Mr. PG’s company could not be said to fall within the category of companies belonging to the “young farmers” axis “, where the share capital must be contributed mostly by individuals not yet forty years of age”.

By a mere mistake, the loan application had been requested on the loan line for young farmers, while the qualification was referable only to the PG (Sole Director of the company) and not to the person who held the company shares (over the age of 40 years). The matter seemed to be concluded thus: the Institute had correctly reclassified the application and PG had accepted the remodulation, awaiting the disbursement of the contribution equal to 40% of the expense. But this did not happen. Just a month later, INAIL self-defended the previous provisions and excluded PG’s company from the financing, as it did not, according to it, meet the requirements to participate in the financing procedure. Therefore PG, represented and defended by the lawyers Girolamo Rubino and Giuseppe Gatto, had lodged an appeal with the Regional Administrative Court of Palermo in April 2022, requesting the annulment of the exclusion provision, highlighting its illegitimacy in several respects. In particular, according to the lawyers Rubino and Gatto, “the compilation error made by Mr. PG could certainly be remedied within the scope of the verification of the applications carried out by INAIL. This is because the two lines of financing ( 50% and 40%) were part of a single financing procedure, where the qualification of a young farmer could have affected only the amount of the financing and not the admissibility of the applications”. In the hearing of 6 March, the Regional Administrative Court of Palermo, sharing the defense arguments of the lawyers, accepted PG’s appeal, deeming the exclusion measure “disproportionate in the part in which instead of simply “reclassifying” the application, it was erroneously advanced as ” young farmer”, totally excluded financing for a person who had all the requirements to access it”. At the same time, therefore, INAIL was condemned to adopt the measure to admit the company to financing. – Photo: Agenzia Fotogramma – (ITALPRESS). sat/com 20-Apr-24 14:03 .