The money from the Cohesion Fund is arriving, but the dispute between the Campania Region and the Ministry for the South is not over. Raffaele Fitto will send 1.8 billion euros, but is waiting for De Luca to present a new plan, in which there are precise spending indications.
After having allocated 1,218 million euros for the interventions included in the environmental remediation and urban regeneration program of the Bagnoli-Coroglio area with Legislative Decree 60/2024, the Council of Ministers approved on June 24 the Legislative Decree containing “Urgent measures for the prevention of seismic risk connected to the bradyseismic phenomenon in the Phlegraean Fields area and for civil protection interventions”, which provides for the allocation of additional resources in favor of Campania.
In particular, this last provision allocates approximately 420 million euros for urgent interventions in the areas of public buildings, transport infrastructures and other essential services to deal with the emergency that occurred in the Flegrea area due to the worsening of the bradyseism phenomenon . These interventions are financed, among other things, for approximately 207 million euros from the resources of the Development and Cohesion Fund allocated to central administrations and for approximately 206 million euros from the resources of the Development and Cohesion Fund allocated programmatically to the territory of the Campania region.
The same provision also allocates 388 million euros, from the resources of the Development and Cohesion Fund programmatically allocated to the territory of the Campania Region, to the completion of the fundamental interventions for the Municipalities, envisaged by the previous programming cycle of the European cohesion policy within the Programme owned by the Campania region and not yet completed, thus responding to the needs expressed by local authorities to have the resources necessary to ensure such completions by the February 2026 deadline envisaged by the European regulations. These are interventions proposed by the Campania region and which have been the subject of a joint investigation aimed at ascertaining their regularity.
The anticipation of these resources by the Government allows the implementation of the cohesion policy while waiting for the Campania region to transmit, as requested by Minister Fitto today to the Region, a new project proposal consistent with the negotiated programming path provided for by the regulatory framework. To date, a discussion is still underway to ensure that the content of the Agreement does not present an excessive number of generic lines of action but, on the contrary, is broken down into well-defined interventions characterized by an advanced state of planning.
In this regard, Minister Fitto highlighted how the Cohesion Agreement method represents the main road to overcome the chronic delays in cohesion policy, which among other things sees in Campania a state of progress in spending for the 2014-2020 programming currently equal to 41% of the overall allocation. As is known, the legal provisions governing the use of state resources from the Development and Cohesion Fund provide for an agreement between the parties and not a mere adherence by the State to the region’s proposal.
Therefore, Minister Fitto has asked the Region to proceed with the submission of a new proposal that is fully consistent with the regulatory provisions and with the new financial perimeter of the Agreement which, net of the aforementioned regulatory provisions, stands at 4,175 million euros. The Government intends, where the conditions for the desired shared definition of the content of the Agreement are not present, to provide for further allocations for the implementation of interventions located in the territory of the Campania region, also through the recognition of advances pursuant to Article 10 of Legislative Decree no. 60 of 2024.
