ROME, July 8 (NNN-XINHUA) – Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, unveiled a simplification plan, aimed at bringing the country quickly out of the COVID-19 emergency, through massive infrastructure spending.
In a televised press conference, Conte promised, the new Simplification and Digital Innovation Decree will streamline Italy’s notoriously bloated, slow and inefficient bureaucratic apparatus, in order to jump-start his Recovery Plan, which include 120 billion euros’ (136 billion U.S. dollars’) worth of public works, a high-speed train network in the country’s chronically impoverished south, and a national fibre-optics network.
“Cabinet approved a decree which finally simplifies, speeds up, and digitalises administrative procedures, unblocks all public works and public contracts procedures, once and for all,” Conte said.
“This measure represents the basis for our Recovery Plan, which contains reforms and measures for which we will request financing in Europe,” the prime minister explained.
He also announced that he will depart later in the day, for “a tour of various European capitals,” to explain Italy’s strategy ahead of the next European Council meeting, to be held in Brussels on July 17-18, when EU leaders will discuss the recovery plan to respond to the COVID-19 crisis.
“This reform is the springboard Italy needs right now,” Conte said. “We are in an emergency, and this decree will make our country more agile, modern and competitive.”
The prime minister went on to assure the public that, cutting red tape and speeding up administrative procedures do not mean the government is letting its guard down against organised crime, which operates by bribing its way into lucrative public contracts through networks of complicit public officials.
A key part of the decree is streamlining procedures for awarding public works contracts to companies, Conte explained.
The measures include eliminating competitive open tenders for projects worth up to 150,000 euros (up from the previous threshold of 40,000 euros).
For public works contracts worth 150,000 euros to five million euros, there will be negotiated procedures without competitive open tenders, while for projects worth five million euros and up, there will be a shortened competitive bidding process, Conte said.
Conte also said, his government’s decree will “revolutionise” the current situation by rewarding public officials who take responsibility and sign off on public works, instead of rewarding those who keep them tied up.
“Currently we are in a perverse situation,” said Conte. “The official whose career advances is the one who remains inert. The one who takes on responsibilities, paradoxically, risks (legal) exposure.”
“From now on, whoever authorises a public work will only be liable for financial damages to the Treasury, in cases where there is intentional malicious behaviour.”
Another “revolutionary” reform, Conte said, is that, “from now on, any red tape that imposes additional financial burdens on citizens must be compensated for, by an equal cut in bureaucratic costs.”
The new decree also cuts red tape for renewable energy projects, including the installation of charging stations for electric vehicles, incentives for towns of under 20,000 residents to use electricity from renewable sources, and fields an extraordinary maintenance plan for forests and mountains.– NNN-XINHUA
