With the PNRR digital funds, Italy must do the opposite of what it has done so far
With the PNRR digital funds
The data show that the European Structural Funds have not been used to grow digitally. With the Recovery fund, we have to reverse the trend
(Photo: Yann Schreiber / Afp / Getty Images) One of the declared objectives of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr) is the digital transition. To achieve this, the Draghi government would like to spend € 24.3 billion from Next Generation Europe funds. This ambition clashes with the historical scarce use of European funds for digital by the Italian regions, as the history of the European funds of the seven-year period 2014-2020 demonstrates.Out of focus investments
Analyzing the data from the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund, it turns out that local governments have not been so worried about the technological or environmental transition of their territories , as well as from supporting small and medium-sized enterprises and the development of infrastructures such as roads and railways.This aspect is very problematic, especially if we consider that in 2014, when the seven-year period of the last European budget began, the Unione, speaking of cohesion policy in Italy, argued that creating an innovative entrepreneurial ecosystem was the number one priority, alongside improving the environment, social inclusion and public administration. Seven years later, it is clear that the regions did not get the message from Brussels. The details are in the next next graph.
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This visualization shows how and where the money from the European Social Fund and the European Regional Development Fund was spent divided by theme. Expenses are cumulated, so each year the graph shows how much total spending has been up to that point. Going to sift through the regions, it turns out that the South, where investment in digital and research would be most needed, is the one that has done the least in this sense. In the seven-year European budget ended in 2020, Campania spent only 79 million euros to fight the digital divide and 162 for technological research. The Campania case is not isolated. Calabria has invested 72 million euros in information and communication technology in seven years. Only 66, on the other hand, to support research and development.
In general, the southern regions invest heavily in the construction of infrastructures such as roads and railways, focusing less on issues such as social inclusion and continuous training. On this issue, the regions of the Center-North show, in fact, a greater spending capacity. Lombardy, in the last seven years, has spent 202 million euros on life-long learning alone. Emilia Romagna has spent 338 to support labor mobility.
Little has been done against the digital divide
The absolute data, however, do not fully realize how much European funds are actually spent on the territory. The best criterion is to measure how much of the total allocated has been spent in each region. In this sense, the next graph allows us to see how much of the investments allocated to counter the digital divide has actually been spent. The situation is not encouraging, for two reasons, as we shall see.var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1625387584491'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '777px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);
The first cause for concern is that many regions have not fully benefited from European investments in information technology. Tuscany stops at 34% of the total allocated for digital, Veneto at 14%. However, going to see how things have changed over the years, we need to go and see the denominator of the fraction: the total budget.
The sums are not always the same
Puglia seems having spent more than what he had available in the IT sector. Yet, until 2019, the allocation on this issue was 271.7 million until 2019. In 2020, the allocated funds were only 76.6 million. A similar thing happened in Emilia Romagna, with funds going from 30 to 11 million. In general, this map sheds some light on an often underestimated theme: the European funds available to the regions are not a fixed amount. These change, depending on the evaluations that the various stakeholders make during the seven-year budget. This is shown by the next series of graphs.var divElement = document.getElementById ('viz1625387188018'); var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName ('object') [0]; vizElement.style.width = '650px'; vizElement.style.height = '637px'; var scriptElement = document.createElement ('script'); scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js'; vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore (scriptElement, vizElement);
In these graphs, we try to compare how much the regions spend in total and what is made available to them. The allocated funds are indicated in billions and are the gold-colored area. The percentage of funds spent is the purple line that corresponds to the vertical axis on the right. As for the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund, Puglia had just over seven billion available until 2019. In 2020, these have become four. This has allowed Puglia to be able to say that it has spent 72% of its European funds. In 2019, its share stood at 28%.
As the graph shows, the stock of investments remains generally stable. It is difficult for the appropriations to undergo significant reductions as happened in Puglia. Stability in the forecast of annual allocations occurs both at the macro level (regional allocations in total) and at the micro level (thematic objectives), as shown in the next visualization.
