Recovery and Resilience Fund and sustainable innovation: beyond public-private partnership
By enacting Regulation 2021/241/EU, the European Union rolled a novel method of government (Lupo, 2023) out to achieve shared progress on pivotal and long-term objectives, some of which had already been enshrined in the EU Treaties (e.g. green transition, social and territorial cohesion, and sustainable and inclusive development). Each Member States requests and obtains tranches of grants and/or loans from the European Commission every six months, on condition that they satisfactorily fulfil negotiated and described milestones and targets. Nevertheless, on the basis of the literal tenets of the law, Regulation 2021/241/EU overlooks governance mechanisms to ensure investments are truly aligned with the above-mentioned goals.
Member States have committed to implementing negotiated reforms and investments not only to fulfil milestones and targets, but also to pursue “just” long-term goals. The typical long-term duration of public-private partnerships (PPPs) contracts led us to investigate to what extend PPPs can address the aforementioned governance needs. Though many scholars have praised the public benefits that PPPs can ideally deliver, in Italy the number and the scale of PPPs is historically contained (ECA 2018). Even in the current recovery and resilience age, public administrations tend to favor public tenders or innovative, multi-actor, and collaborative contracts to meet milestones and targets.
As empirically verified, recklessly relying on PPPs to make social investments and build infrastructures – such as in public health, social and territorial cohesion, and green transition – could bring about the exclusion of the communities (e.g. citizens, third-sectors organizations, start-ups) from the stewardship of those infrastructures (Foster and Iaione, 2022; Iaione, 2024). How can communities be involved in the management of social infrastructures? Our hypothesis prompts us a good starting point would be to move beyond the public-private dichotomy and to clearly define which actors involved in the investment process should produce co-benefits (e.g. socially useful activities, shared energy). Three case studies at least from the Italian Recovery and Resilience Plan demonstrate active collaboration among public, private, and community actors (e.g. social innovators, start-ups, third-sector organization) could be the key to make concrete steps forward the targets enshrined in art. 3 Reg. 2021/241/EU that cannot be reached by 2026.
Integrated Urban Plans
The ‘Integrated Urban Plans’ (so-called PUIs) are new urban planning projects identified by metropolitan cities, as bodies with the purpose of ‘taking care of the strategic development of the metropolitan territory’ (Art. 1, co. 2, Law No. 56/2014), and financed exclusively within the PNRR investment – ‘Integrated Urban Plans’. The same interventions are aimed, on the one hand, at fostering better social inclusion (e.g. through the promotion of proximity social and health services at the local level), and, on the other hand, at promoting urban regeneration through the eco-sustainable recovery, renovation and re-functionalization of building structures and public areas, the energy and water efficiency of buildings and the reduction of land consumption. The projects eligible for financing have the duty to ‘ensure broad participation processes of economic actors and civil society in the definition phase of the interventions object of the Integrated Plans’ (Art. 21, co. 7, lett. d-bis), Law Decree no. 152/2021). This means, according to the participatory urban planning model envisaged: the necessary co-participation of the municipalities of the metropolitan area in the definition of PUI interventions; co-designing with the third sector and the optional presence of public service start-ups, as well as the possibility of private participation up to a maximum of 25% of the total cost of the intervention. And yet, the lack or deficiency of these participatory processes – all the more so in the management phase of urban infrastructures for the provision of goods and services – can reduce, if not nullify, the impact of the investment made, not only quantitatively but also qualitatively.
Community Health Houses
In the context of the new national territorial health service, the Community House (CdC) is the ‘physical, proximity and easily identifiable place to which the assisted person can have access in order to get in touch with the health care system’. The district can also carry out its district activities ‘through the enhancement of the participation of all the community resources in the various forms and through the involvement of the various local actors (ASL, municipalities and their unions, professionals, patients and their caregivers, associations/organisations of the third sector, etc.)’ (ministerial decree no. 77/2022). And yet, reading the relevant ministerial decree there is no reference whatsoever to the community, no longer passive users, to which the community home refers, nor the same attention paid by local authorities to defining these forms of participation. At the same time, it should not be forgotten that in the regions and local authorities of northern Italy a centralised regional health service model, known as programming-purchasing-control (so-called PAC), has long been consolidated, which makes it difficult for other models to be grafted on in a decentralised sense. Yet, the ‘participation of all community resources’ and the ‘involvement of different local actors’ could be decisive in building citizens’ trust in the services offered within these infrastructures, as well as widespread knowledge of these services. How? There are a series of sociomedical activities that may lend themselves to being the subject of an experimental and multi-actor type of partnership already envisaged by the legislation in force (art. 9-bis, para. 1, legislative decree no. 502/1992), which envisages the so-called guaranteed elements aimed mainly at preventing the partnership from satisfying just the interests of the private actor (so-called private centrifugal forces).
Renewable energy communities
Renewable energy communities are a type of multi-actor, multi-stakeholder partnership that already exists in national and European Union law. According to Art. 31, para. 1 of Legislative Decree No. 199/2021, a renewable energy community is an autonomous private law entity whose main objective is to provide environmental benefits (e.g. the production and use of energy from renewable energy sources (RES), instead of energy from fossil fuels), economic benefits (e.g. economic contributions, tax deductions, etc.) or social benefits (e.g. economic contributions, tax deductions, etc.). e.g. economic contributions, tax deductions, etc.) or social benefits (e.g. the promotion of forms of active citizenship, the fight against energy poverty, the provision of social services) at the community level to its partners or members or to the local areas in which the community operates. Compared to the first definition of ‘renewable energy community’ found in Art. 2(2) No. 16(b) Directive (EU) 2018/2001, Art. 31(1) of Legislative Decree No. 199/2021 provides for the possibility of RECs being composed of a broader and more varied number of entities. The partnerships referred to above have been the subject of analysis by the doctrine and can involve up to five actors: the civic (social innovators and active citizens), the social (third sector organisations), the cognitive (cultural institutions, schools and universities), the public (public institutions) and the private (businesses and industries). The definition and implementation of such a genus of partnerships – still little known and widespread in the Italian legal system – within the framework of the renewable energy community scheme could be an opportunity to implement at a local level the constitutional and general principle of civic collaboration (Mortati, 1959).
From what has been reported so far, we can draw the following transversal results: the (timid) openness of the legislator to collaborative forms for the provision of goods and services is not always matched by an effective implementation of the same collaborative forms; the legislator, driven by Reg. (EU) 241/2021, pursues not only the public interest in implementing the financed work, but also horizontal interests; it is crucial that in such partnerships the state is an enabler, facilitating the definition and management of public-private-community relations.
Finally, based on personal empirical research conducted in the field by interviewing officials and managers in charge of the implementation of the national recovery plan, it would appear that the success or failure of such partnerships (Iaione 2022) relies upon the State’s capacity to spot and locally design co-governance enablers (e.g. re-skilling and up-skilling processes; physical and digital infrastructure; institutional infrastructure; co-production of public services) and address certain inhibitors (e.g. risk of political outsourcing, the expertise of the actors involved).
Edoardo Campisi
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References
Lupo Nicola, Il Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza: un nuovo procedimento euro-nazionale, in Federalismi, 2023, n. 5, 11 (www.federalismi.it/ApplOpenFilePDF.cfm?artid=48405&dpath=document&dfile=15022023162021.pdf&content=Il%2BPiano%2BNazionale%2Bdi%2BRipresa%2Be%2BResilienza%3A%2Bun%2Bnuovo%2Bprocedimento%2Beuro%2Dnazionale%2B%2D%2Bstato%2B%2D%2Bpaper%2B%2D%2B).
European Court of Auditors, Special Report: Public Private Partnerships in the EU: Widespread shortcomings and limited benefits, 2018, n. 9 (www.eca.europa.eu/lists/ecadocuments/sr18_09/sr_ppp_en.pdf).
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Mortati Costantino, La persona, lo Stato e le comunità intermedie, Torino, Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1959, 174
Iaione Christian, Urban Sustainable Development and Innovation Partnerships, in 14 Italian J. Pub. L. (2022), 521 (www.ijpl.eu/urban-sustainable-development-and-innovation-partnerships/).