The PNRR enters a phase of necessary acceleration with the real test that will arrive in the last useful semester, the one that will close on 30 June 2026.
The deadline does not admit exceptions: by that date Italy will have to hit 177 objectives and goals, equal to over 28% of the entire national recovery and resilience plan.
PNRR unbalanced on the ending
The PNRR chronoprogram, at least on paper, is impossible because concentrating so many objectives in the last six months risks transforming the race towards the finish line into an unprecedented administrative and bureaucratic traffic jam.
Of the 614 goals and overall objectives, more than a quarter has been scheduled in the last installment, the tenth. The choice, in part, reflects the will to give time to the administrations to design and start the most complex works. But the result is that, close to the deadline, we find ourselves with an accumulation of procedures, construction sites and obligations to be completed. And the times are very narrow.
The official table speaks clearly: while in the first six installments about 270 objectives were distributed (already achieved), and in the following three installments about 167 objectives, the last installment alone has 177. Practically a final with a bang.
The bureaucratic node on the PNRR
Each PNRR goal is not a box to be ticked, but a complex process: calls, competitions, contracts, authorizations, monitoring, certifications to be sent to Brussels. The concentration of 177 objectives also means an extraordinary amount of administrative acts to manage, in a country that already struggles with the average times of bureaucracy.
The Court of Auditors has repeatedly reported that the administrative machine, especially locally, is fragile. The risk is that the entities, crushed by the amount of deadlines, point more to the quantity than to quality, opening “last minute” construction sites only to certify the start of the works. The side effects would consist of works started and not concluded, interventions carried out quickly and with poor programming, dispersion of resources. This is not an unpublished phenomenon in Italy, a paradise of unfinished works, where European funds of ordinary programming are often spent in extremis, with the sole objective not to lose them. If this scheme repeated with the PNRR, Italy would spread not only money, but also its national credibility. But on the table there is also the credibility of the Meloni government, to which the oppositions will not make discounts in the event of objectives not centered in the field of PNRR.
From the EU no extension to the PNRR
The European Commission has already clarified that there is no extension on the PNRR: the funds must be spent strictly by August 31, 2026 and all payment requests must arrive by September 30, 2026. The European Parliament has asked for an 18 -month extension, but the Commission line remains hard. Translation: if Italy does not complete the 177 objectives in time risks losing billions of euros.
In the meantime, the Italian regions travel: as part of the PNRR two regions in particular added have managed to spend 30 billion. These are Lombardy (17 billion for 44,533 projects) and Campania (13.03 billion for 26,535 projects). The ranking of regional projects sees Umbria (2.29 billion for 4,990 projects), Molise (1.87 billion for 3,255 projects) and Valle d’Aosta (0.59 billion for 1,017 projects).
