Naples accelerates towards scrapping-quinquies. The City Council, with a unanimous vote, formally requested membership of the new amnesty mechanism. A game worth a total of around 1.6 billion euros in taxes and uncollected fines.
An enormous sum, which alone exceeds the current expenditure planned by the Municipality for 2026. Within this total, the heaviest chapter is that of fines, which overall exceed one billion euros and have represented a real structural criticality for Palazzo San Giacomo for years.
The issue of uncollected fines
There remain fines accumulated over time, some dating back to 2010, which have never been collected and which today weigh like a ton on the municipal budget. In 2023, for example:
- the fines established amounted to approximately 900 million euros;
- the actual collection stopped at just 22 million.
This accumulation generates the so-called “active residues”, sums recorded in the balance sheet but not actually available. By law, the Municipality must cover them through the Doubtful Debt Fund, freezing resources that could instead be used for services and investments.
How scrapping works
The scrapping-quinquies is a concrete attempt to unblock this situation. It allows citizens to pay off debts without additional penalties, interest or late fees.
For those who join:
- you pay only the original amount of the bill;
- interest and penalties are eliminated;
- the closure of debt positions is facilitated.
For the Municipality, however, it means transforming theoretical credits into real collections, even if partial. According to estimates, it would be enough to recover a third of the 1.6 billion to guarantee the sustainability of the repayment plan. This would make it possible to cover annual installments of 140 million for the next five years.
The role of collection and “Naples Objective Value”
A signal comes from the work carried out in recent years with the company “Napoli Objective Valore” (Nov), in charge of collection from 2023. In just two years, Nov has already brought 275 million euros into municipal coffers, exceeding initial expectations.
However, the bulk of the problem remains linked to credits accumulated before 2023, where the mass of uncollected sums is concentrated, among which Tari and fines stand out.
The impact on public finances
The theme of collection is one of the pillars of the so-called “Pact for Naples”, the plan that is allowing the Municipality to gradually emerge from the predisposition. The numbers show a significant improvement:
- the deficit was reduced from 2.2 billion in 2021 to 1.4 billion in 2025;
- debt fell from 2.8 billion to 2 billion in the same period.
An overall recovery of over 1.6 billion, also made possible thanks to greater attention to collection. But without structural intervention on old debts, the risk is that the system will remain burdened by credits that are difficult to recover.
