New Recovery, Renzi has collected a lot. here’s the list

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A few minutes after noon, Matteo Renzi, with his e-news, remembers the issue on which the fate of the government hangs. “On the Recovery plan at least in words they are proving us right”, writes the leader of Italia Viva in view of the Council of Ministers which will start in Palazzo Chigi at half past nine in the evening. The judgment on the contents of the 222.9 billion Italian plan will be illustrated by Teresa Bellanova and Elena Bonetti, the two Renzian ministers who will sit at the meeting table. On that table will be the 179 pages of the latest draft of the plan. Beyond the political positioning, the contents, the papers contain a long list of concessions made by Giuseppe Conte to Renzi: the neutralization of the governance question, more money for investments, health and education, but also the cancellation of the Intelligence Foundation.

How the recovery plan has changed. So Conte tries to mine Renzi’s boarding

The new draft follows the summary document of the changes that the Treasury had sent to Palazzo Chigi on 7 January. But those thirteen pages had not been deemed sufficient by Italia Viva. The request, which arrived a few hours later and reiterated until last night, was to have a new complete draft in hand, a definitive document to be compared with the draft of December 29th. The one that the Renzians did not like and that caused tensions within the government to explode. From there, new meetings at the Ministry of Economy, new calculations, some adjustments. As a matter of fact – net of the changes that may still be introduced with the parliamentary passage – the Renzians snatch an increase in resources for the school. In all, including research, there are 28.49 billion. After the failure of high school students to return to class on January 7, school has become even more of a hot topic. The Renzians contested the position of the Democratic Party, which decided to postpone, and more generally the school is one of the flagships of Italia Viva, among other things strongly opposed to distance learning. Also because the school intersects with the theme of the family in terms of leave and smart working and the owner of the Department of the Family is Minister Bonetti, quota IV. A delicate cross. And an important concession arrives precisely on the family, with the chapter being loaded with more than 30 billion. The pivot, political and economic, is the single allowance for children. It is the first stone of the Family Act, one of the pillars of the Italia Viva program. Introduced with the maneuver, it thus becomes a pivot also for planning the spending of European money until 2026.

Even more direct is the attempt to bring back the discontent of the Renzians by increasing attention to agriculture. The proxy is in the hands of Teresa Bellanova, another minister of Italia Viva. The money allocated reaches 6.3 billion, but some issues – such as hydrogen – intersect other sectors and therefore it cannot be said that they are money reserved exclusively for agriculture. A signal has been given, but it is not necessarily enough, as for the rest of the changes. A first rejection has already arrived and from Bellanova herself who intervening a Radio too was tranchant: “If I had to give a first impression, for the part that most directly recalls my responsibility for agriculture, I would say that it is absolutely inadequate”.

But the great openings of Conte to Renzi have an impact on other issues. In the new draft, the reversals on the issues that have opened the battle on the Recovery and therefore within the majority are made longer and more discursive. Starting with governance, which is nothing more than the structure of the machine that will have to manage the money. The draft reads as follows: “The Government, on the basis of the European guidelines for implementing the Plan, will present to Parliament a governance model that identifies the responsibility for implementing the Plan, guarantees coordination with the competent Ministers at national level and other levels of government, monitor the progress of expenditure “. No decision, therefore, but a postponement. A move, that of Conte, which represents a surrender or at least a cancellation of that structure that he had locked up until the end of December. So the Conte-Gualtieri-Patuanelli triumvirate is gone and the task force of super experts is gone. All cleared and all postponed to the moment in which the plan will be presented to the Chambers. An attempt, that of the premier, to cash in anyway the yes of the Renzians at the Council of Ministers tonight, promising that on governance there will be a collegiality in the choice that will be made.

Another issue that animates the tensions within the Government, on Recovery and beyond, is that of the Services. From the first and up to the penultimate draft, the Italian plan provided for the creation of an Italian cybersecurity institute. Temporarily suspended from the drafts, failed to include it in the budget law, the project was always reappeared in a document of the Recovery. Meanwhile, the Renzians themselves have made the Services a battleground with Conte on the delicate issue of delegation. The latest draft no longer reports the Cybersecurity Institute project. Deleted.

Healthcare resources then rise, reaching 19.7 billion (they were 9 billion in the first draft). This too is an obvious concession to Renzi, who has been hammering on the issue for weeks. An attempt, always that of Conte, to try to mine another hot dossier, always pushed by the Renzians, namely the use of the Sanitary Mes. And then, looking at the total amount of money provided for by the plan, the game is confirmed with the European funds already available. The cake has risen with funds for cohesion and has reached 222.9 billion: of these, 144.2 are for new interventions, another issue raised by Italia Viva which criticized an excessive allocation of resources on projects already financed and in place . Just as the rebalancing between the portion dedicated to investments (70%) and that reserved for bonuses and incentives (reduced to 21%) is certified. On this point too, the Renzians had raised the barricades, contesting the reckless use of the aid rain mechanism.