Partnership agreement negotiated between Italy and the EU

The formal negotiation between Italy and the European Commission on the Partnership Agreement for Regional Funds 2021-27 is ongoing.

The negotiation, which may last up to three months, is based on the document containing the guidelines for the realization of investments, sent by the Italian Government on 21 December, as announced by the Commission. by Minister for the South and Territorial Cohesion Mara Carfagna.

Italy will be able to count on €75.622 billion of Structural Funds in the 2021-2027 cycle, including European resources and national co-financing. In particular, the funds coming from Brussels will be equal to more than 43 billion, including those for cross-border programmes and Just Transition. It is therefore about 9 billion more than the previous seven-year programming.

The regions considered ‘in transition’ are Abruzzo (already in this category in the previous cycle), Umbria and Marche (previously considered ‘more developed’). The ‘less developed’ regions, on the other hand, are all the remaining regions of the Mezzogiorno (Campania, Molise, Puglia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia) and the ‘most developed’ are the others in the Centre-North.

Thanks to cohesion funds, GDP per capita in less developed regions is expected to increase by up to 5 %.% by 2023. This is the estimate of the European Commission, commenting on some of the contents of the eighth Cohesion Report published in recent days. According to the report, the gap between the per capita GDP of less developed regions and that of more developed regions has narrowed (the comparison is between the 10% less developed and 10% more developed). Cohesion funds have gone from 34% to 52% total public investment between the programming period 2007-2013 and 2014-2020.