urgent Government and Parliament intervention to avoid disputes and TARI increases – www.anci.it

The well-known vicissitudes that are affecting many municipalities from north to south and the waste service managers make it urgent for the Government to intervene to protect citizens and prevent an increase in the rates of the urban waste management service, due to a combination of difficulties linked to application of the ARERA rules and, mainly, to the so-called affair. “minimum systems” triggered by some sentences of the Council of State against the Authority’s decisions.
In particular, this concerns the cancellation by the Council of the provisions contained in ARERA resolution 363/21, with which the Authority defined the criteria for the identification of “minimum systems”, on the basis of which some Regions have adopted the resolutions in which the indispensable plants for closing the waste cycle in the area are identified (so-called minimum plants) and, consequently, have requested the plant managers to draw up economic plans for the definition of the resulting regulated tariffs.
Following these sentences, ARERA annulled its decisions, at the same time providing for the safeguarding, but only starting from 2024, of the tariff system adopted so far, leaving the previous years, 2022-2023, without regulation, on the basis of which they have already tariff revenues relating to minimum installations have been determined in various regions within the PEFs. This creates a void due to which, in the absence of urgent intervention by the Government or Parliament, users of the same regions would find themselves forced to return to the managers of the plants already defined as “minimum” on the basis of the previous ARERA regulation, the difference in tariff for the years 2022 and 2023 with an increase in the Tari despite the presence of a regulation – the National Waste Management Plan (PNGR) – which from June 2022 defines the possibility of applying regulated tariffs.
This serious uncertainty, in addition to determining an inequality between users of the service in the different areas of the country, with the risks of tariff increases mentioned above, also entails important material difficulties in the drafting of the 2024 PEFs, whose next deadline of 30 April is imminent and , in many realities, unsustainable.
In this context of serious uncertainty, there are also widespread delays in the 2024-2025 biennial update of the PEF. Without a validated PEF it is not possible to approve the tariffs by April 30, with consequent tacit confirmation of the tariffs approved in 2023, which however will be insufficient to cover the actual costs for 2024. In the absence of PEFs available in good time, therefore being approved after deadline of 30 April, the Municipalities will be able to temporarily confirm the current tariffs and decide on the new tariffs by 31 July, in order to restore budget balance (in application of art. 193 of the TUEL), but this possibility appears viable only for the Tari and not for the corresponding waste tariff, so that a short circuit will be created between the reference standards and the ARERA requirements on the drafting of the PEF, with the risk of not guaranteeing full coverage of the costs.
The ANCI has been active since recent months, drawing the Government’s attention to the problem also with the presentation of an amendment that regulates the situation and extends the deadline of the PEF and the waste collection tariffs to June 30th, which unfortunately has not been welcomed. It is necessary and now unpostponable that the Government and Parliament take note of this particular emergency as soon as possible, on the one hand by providing for a wider deadline for the drafting of the PEF, at least to 30 June, and on the other by providing for a buffer solution for the annuities that remain without regulation of the so-called “minimum” systems (2022 and 2023) to avoid tariff increases in many local areas.