A “seriously incorrect” reconstruction of the facts. This is the opinion of the municipal administration of Noceto in reference to the news of the judgment issued by the Council of State regarding the matter of the photovoltaic system owned by the municipality in the Borghetto area and what was stated by the mayoral candidate Ermanno Zuccheri.
The double level of administrative judgment, recently concluded with the ruling of the Council of State last March 25, led to the rejection of the appeal proposed again in 2022 by the Municipality, in order to obtain the annulment of a provision of the GSE, which declared the partial forfeiture of the Municipality itself from the right to receive the tariff incentive.
” This sentence does not contain any sentence, other than that of the liquidation of the litigation costs in favor of the GSE, as a consequence of the well-known principle of procedural defeat. There is, therefore, no immediate risk looming over the municipal budget, also because the Administration has already instructed its lawyers to appeal for revocation against the decision of the Council of State, believing that this is based on a serious misperception of the facts of the case. It follows that, pending the deadline for present such an appeal, and until this is decided, any claim by the GSE must be considered merely contingent”.
Renewables, Municipality of Noceto succumbs to the Council of State. “To be repaid between 8 and 9 million euros”
April 22, 2024
The organization reconstructs the story as follows: “Its beginnings date back, in fact, to 2010, when a municipal council different from the current one, moreover, considered it completely legitimate and agreeable to take part in an ambitious and innovative project – which was joined by numerous other municipalities in the area – promoted and managed, also as a single contracting authority, by the Province of Parma (Photovoltaic Insieme). In execution of this project, in 2011, on the basis of a twenty-year construction and management concession contract stipulated with a South Tyrolean company specialized in the renewable energy sector, the plant was regularly activated, following the ritual Enel connection and testing carried out by the then manager of the Province of Parma of the Environment sector. The concession contract provided that the concessionaire company would pay the Municipality an annual fee, the collection of which is still in progress, in exchange for the transfer from the Municipality to the concessionaire of the credit equal to the totality of the incentive tariff paid periodically by the GSE”.
“The stipulation of said concession contract was made possible by the signing of a specific agreement with the GSE, which, at the time (2011), on the basis of the same documents reconsidered in 2022, had considered the Nocetano plant eligible for an agreement and the incentive. In 2022, 11 years after the activation of the plant, and without anyone having ever raised doubts in this regard, the GSE, as part of a national control campaign, which also involved the plants owned by other Municipalities in the province, contested some alleged irregularities on the date of actual activation of the system, and, in declaring the partial forfeiture of the incentive tariff, announced that it wanted to achieve the reimbursement of the greater difference paid over the course of over a decade”.
In this regard, adds the Municipality, “it is important to clarify that the Manager’s initiative was based on some alleged declarative omissions attributable not to the managers of the municipal offices – completely unrelated results – but to the concessionaire Company and its technicians involved in the installation of the plant. The construction of the plant, in fact, was, by virtue of the aforementioned concession, the exclusive responsibility of the Company, so that any municipal responsibility is to be excluded”.
A technical affair, therefore, so much so that “the judge himself confused the current generators with the transformers and the meters, thus concluding that the system had not been activated within the required deadlines, while the latter was functioning. The judge of the appeal for revocation will be asked to rule on this.”
“Zuccheri, in his polemical ‘furor’ and due to the approximation of his narrative, forgets, moreover, to consider that, should the appeal for revocation not be successful, the obligation of restitution would concern, in the first instance, the concessionaire company, effective preceptor of the incentives, and not on this Municipality”.
The Administration declares itself available “for any serious and non-instrumental or propagandistic discussion. It is, in fact, truly sad to note that the candidate for mayor opens his campaign with a controversy, which does not concern mismanagement, but a prudent administrative choice which heralds positive advantages for the Nocetana population, which is only an alleged technical error, however not caused by the municipal administration, risks jeopardizing. We note, with regret, that Zuccheri has no other attitude than that of ‘raising fuss’, also demonstrating no awareness of the situations and mechanisms that a mayor must know from the first day of his inauguration”.
