For Italia Nostra, coronavirus must not be an excuse to massacre the landscape: no to simplification for construction sites

Italia Nostra expresses concern that the coronavirus could become an excuse to massacre the Italian landscape, which is already battered enough on its own. In fact, the association denounces increasingly pressing requests for so-called simplifications in derogation of the rules for the construction of public works. The latest, Italia Nostra points out, concerns the request of 200 mayors to receive special powers, in 2020, going by way of derogation from the Procurement Code and the Superintendencies, in order to speed up the most important works and the restart of construction sites as much as possible. And Italia Nostra is concerned that the simplifications could spread to the other 7704 Italian municipalities.

“With every disaster, earthquake or crisis,” points out Ebe Giacometti, national president of Italia Nostra, “invocations for simplification are raised, often by the same people who voted those regulations into Parliament. It is clear that there is an infrastructure problem in Italy, caused in large part by corruption. It is equally clear that delays levitate costs and encourage corrupt phenomena. Therefore, the answer lies not in circumventing the rules, but in making the system more efficient. The guidelines to be proposed should have as a guiding thread a few stringent rules, impassable and equal throughout the country.”

According to a recent study by Fillea CGIL, the Procurement Code approved in 2016 has produced an upswing in the capacity to build works in Italy: in the last months of 2019 and up to January 2020, in fact, one billion more works have been built on site compared to the same period of the previous year (data from the Ministry of Infrastructure of Transport of February 2020). For Italia Nostra, rather than circumventing the code, it would be necessary, on the contrary, to provide a special funding fund for design, act on the training of a staff of highly qualified technical figures in the Public Administration, and reduce the more than 30,000 contracting stations to a more monitorable number. Italia Nostra again finds it serious that, under the guise of economic recovery, attempts are being made to depower protections for cultural heritage and the environment, a demand that, of course, finds Italia Nostra resolutely opposed all along.

Italia Nostra’s most recent note, however, also sees a proactive side: the association, in fact, agrees on boosting the necessary public works and for this reason suggests funding the ready-made projects lying in the drawers of Italian municipalities, which concern interventions on hydrogeological instability, earthquake-proofing of public buildings and historic centers, the strengthening of the public transport network and city infrastructure (e.g. aqueducts and the sewage system), the construction of waste treatment and recycling plants and, finally, the implementation of energy efficiency interventions. “Instead of continuing to run for cover by spending money after, only after, disastrous events,” hopes Vitantonio Iacoviello, Italia Nostra national councilor, “take advantage of the funding provided for widespread interventions, distributed throughout the territory, with incentives for the entire population, which will create widespread and lasting work.”

For Italia Nostra, coronavirus must not be an excuse to massacre the landscape: no to simplification for construction sites

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