The RE.S.TO.R.E.– Recovering the State Towards a Reformed Economy aims to examine the new role of public authorities in the economy following the crisis caused by the Covid-19 epidemic.
Since the beginning of the economic and financial crisis dating back to 2008, public authorities have started developing new and robust policy measures in broad and important market sectors. This trend has become even more visible with the further and subsequent public debt crisis of some European states, and most recently in relation to the measures to address the socio-economic consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic. Moving away from the broad and consolidated pattern of the Regulatory State, a new model, the Saviour State, is emerging, which in many cases prevails over the former especially when it comes to defending national economic security.
Italy is no exception to this trend. In recent years, even in the context of the actions currently underway to counter the pandemic crisis and to implement ambitious European reform and recovery programmes, the State has preferred the direct and significant exercise of exclusive prerogatives. This could take the form of transversal recourse to so-called ‘golden power’ or the systemic use of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (Deposit and Loan Bank) as an entity capable of channelling large amounts of funds into specific areas. In more general terms then the State is assuming the role of decisive coordinator of strategic public policy measures in the market, as currently in the preparation of the implementation measures of the Next Generation EU plan.
Objectives
The RE.S.TO.R.E. research project aims to develop the theme of the changes taking place in both national and supranational public powers for a new governance of the economy, which has now become necessary thanks to the current health and economic crisis.
To this end, the research project rests on five fundamental pillars. The first pillar concerns the role of European institutions in redefining public intervention in the economy, with particular reference to the Next Generation EU and its national variations. The second concerns the preparation and institutional management of Italy’s recovery and resilience plan, on which the relaunch of the national economic system over the next five years ought to be based. The third concerns the analysis of the role of the State in the promotion and realisation of infrastructures, through the management of the resources coming from the Next Generation EU. The fourth refers to analysis of the instruments used by public authorities to safeguard economic systems from predatory acquisitions, with particular focus on the different national and supranational regulatory frameworks for golden power. The fifth relates to the mapping and identification of the Italian public shareholding system, also in the light of the new role in the recovery period played by important institutions such as the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti.
The role of operational units
Each operational units will analyse the various aspects that seem to indicate that the relationship between the State and the market are in need of review, focusing, on the one hand, on the dynamics of European integration which, from the point of view of cooperation and coordination, intend to promote economic and industrial recovery in the internal market and, on the other hand, to instances of economic and territorial security that the States have begun to express also through the use of legal instruments already tested in the past, but which must now be placed in a completely different legal and regulatory framework.
The specific nature of the profiles described requires an interdisciplinary approach. For this reason, the operational units have involved different competences of a legal, economic, and technical nature.
The project will involve the following operational units:
- Luiss Guido Carli University of Rome (Head: Prof. Aldo Sandulli);
- The University of Palermo (Head: Prof. Lorenzo Saltari);
- IUAV University of Venice (Head: Prof. Giuseppe Piperata);
- Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Head: Prof. Marco Dugato);
- The University of Trent (Head: Prof. Fulvio Cortese).
In particular, the operational unit at the Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome will investigate the economic and industrial recovery initiatives adopted by the European Union, with particular reference to the Next Generation EU, in order to identify a balance in the redefinition of relations between the European Union and the Member States and to assess, on the basis of a comparative and interdisciplinary survey, the impact of European objectives and conditions in the National Recovery and Resilience Plans (NRP) that the individual Member States have to submit by April 2021.
Thus, the unit seeks to assess whether the Next Generation EU actually constitutes a step forward in the process of European integration, given the many innovative features it contains, including the issuance of European public debt securities and the use of the Union’s own fiscal resources.
The European Union, in fact, is not only on its way to becoming the major financial intermediary at regional level, but could end up playing an important role as an ‘intervening’ actor in the economy, considering, moreover, that the main interlocutors would not be private companies, but public entities with a sovereign matrix and general competences, such as the Member States.
The implications of this innovative model on the Italian system will be examined in depth by the operational unit at the University of Palermo, which will focus on the process of defining the national PNRR from the point of view of the design of the interventions and the methods of implementation, which pose a series of challenges at the institutional, organisational, and administrative levels. Firstly, it will be necessary to ascertain how the projects to be included in the Plan were selected, and then to consider the institutional changes brought about by the Plan in terms of relations between levels of government, public-private relations, and innovations in administrative control.
In terms of content, the NRP lists mobility and digital infrastructure as priority areas for action. In view of Italy’s worryingly poor and backward infrastructures, the task force at the IUAV University of Venice intends to investigate the critical points that emerge with respect to the EU’s objectives of modernising and building infrastructures, also in relation to the role that the EU acknowledges to states in this area. In the first place, the team will examine bureaucratic resistance, given that digital transition especially clashes with an (often) scarce administrative culture.
With regard to physical infrastructures, on the other hand, the research will show how much the Italian administration is suffering from the dismantling of technical bodies and the inadequacy of organisational structures, which often lack the skills they need. Secondly, the critical issues that can arise from implementing participatory processes involving the population interested in infrastructure planning will be explored. Lastly, the unit will analyse the emerging issues of environmental compatibility and the sustainability of planned policies.
However, as mentioned above, alongside the supranational initiatives, the health and economic crisis has led States to make exclusively domestic choices, stimulated by increasingly widespread policies to protect economic security. The latter sometimes risk deviating from European guidelines, making it necessary to investigate the underlying reasons and the conditions for compatibility with the overall regulatory framework.
This is particularly evident with reference to golden power institutions and public shareholdings in private companies.
The first of these will be examined in depth by the operational unit at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, which will retrace its evolution and then focus on recent recourse to state prerogatives in an essentially ‘protectionist’ vision. While this has also been partly allowed by the European Union in relation to foreign direct investment in the European market (Reg. 2019/452/EU), the national measures adopted through the so-called Liquidity Decree (Art. Liquidity Decree (Articles 15-17, d.l. no. 23/2020 converted by law. no. 40/2020) have also extended the scope of application of golden power to companies from EU Member States.
The main lines of investigation of the unit will therefore be the identification of the actual and not only theoretical limits imposed by European law and the Constitution to the legal framework and the exercise of golden power, the search for a proportionate balance between the reasons for protecting strategic interests and the principle of competition, the efficiency of the instrument to safeguard the interests for which the special powers are provided, and the search for alternative ways to satisfy these interests.
Lastly, the operational unit at the University of Trent will analyse the public shareholding institution. In this case too, the recent reforms adopted at state level have highlighted the desire to resort once again to state shareholdings to support and relaunch the Italian economy. The so-called Decreto Rilancio (or ‘Relaunch Decree’) grants in this a central role to Cassa Depositi e Prestiti Spa (Article 27, Decree-Law No. 34/2020, converted by Law No. 77/2020).
This trend reveals the existence of an interesting field of investigation, considering that similar measures could also be introduced at regional and local level where the levels of government tend to intervene along the lines of the State model, especially when it is necessary to face critical financial and economic moments.
In addition to this, strong and transversal public commitment systematically brings into play the role of supervisory bodies, first and foremost the Court of Auditors. Moreover, it will be necessary to investigate, on the one hand, the effects of the new State measures on the system of public companies as outlined by Legislative Decree no. 175 of 2016 and, on the other hand, to analyse – in comparison with what happens in other European systems – the compatibility of the Italian reforms underway with the European rules on state aid and, in particular, with the recent EU Temporary Framework on state aid to address the Covid-19 emergency of March 2020 and subsequent amendments.
