Meloni’s anger: the transport funding was available, but the paperwork got stuck at the MIT

Overburdened ministries, blocked motorways. How much does indolence cost? Before asking the banks for funds, Salvini should try spending what he already has. The lorry drivers’ protest? Organised crime has infiltrated it, but the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT) has done the rest. The money has been there for months, but the paperwork has remained unprocessed, passed from one department to another. Meloni is aware of this; she is furious (and rightly so), so much so that yesterday she convened an extraordinary Council of Ministers meeting, allocated further funds (175 million euros) and declared in a video: “Those who work cannot wait for bureaucracy to run its course.” Behind these words lies a story: the unbearable slowness of the ministerial machine.

Edoardo Rixi, Salvini’s deputy minister—the only one working with diligence and passion—is right when he says, at a press conference following the Council of Ministers meeting, that half of Italy is still mired in a jungle of verbal contracts. All true, just as it is true that a further 175 million in aid to tackle high diesel prices was added at the Council of Ministers meeting. It is also true that there is a problem with the fleet of vehicles in need of renewal – lorries that cannot use electric technology but still rely on the old internal combustion engine. Rixi has stepped into the spotlight in place of Salvini, who is currently in Milan organising the Lega Congress, as confirmed by his chief of staff, Alfredo Storto: “The secretary is busy with the big event, the congress.” Let us now turn to the story that has infuriated Meloni.

When Meloni heard about the lorry blockades, she picked up the phone and asked: ‘Excuse me, but hadn’t we allocated over 480 million euros in May in the form of a tax credit? What went wrong?’ The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) transfers the funds to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT), which in turn must assess the hauliers’ claims. This is where the bottleneck lies. A MIT directorate decree (28 August) sets out the procedures for disbursing the funds and addressing the high cost of diesel for the periods from March to October 2026. The MIT verifies the applications and sends the beneficiaries’ details to the Revenue Agency. If everything is in order, the tax credits are made available in the tax account. The entire process should be completed within 24 hours. In theory. There is also a digital platform that acts as a bridge between the MIT and the Revenue Agency. But if the MIT does not send the data or process it, what happens? It is a deadlock.

It so happens that law-abiding lorry drivers are beginning to protest, but the most violent ones are taking the lead, and the country comes to a standstill. In the south, the situation is far worse than has been reported. Meloni should be grateful that lazy media outlets such as the ministerial press (who write their little musings from behind a desk: ‘from your correspondent in his little office’) only sent journalists out a few days ago. There has been a shortage of medicines in Sicily and Calabria for at least two weeks now, on top of all the food that has gone off. How many applications has the MIT examined in recent months, from September to the present day? Following Meloni’s outburst, the MIT assessed over 2,000 in a single day. 2,000. A record-breaking figure.

We asked Storto whether the system had worked, and Storto told us: “We can assure you that the system worked. The problem was caused by the unrecognised lorry drivers’ associations”. There is no doubt that the rioters seized an opportunity, but why wasn’t the money arriving, and why did Salvini have to declare that he had ‘unblocked’ funds that nobody had blocked – unless they had blocked them themselves? Why did Meloni state in her video: ‘The checks will be carried out later. Those who work cannot wait for bureaucracy to run its course”? Roberto Garofoli, Draghi’s undersecretary, recalled that a minister should start their day by phoning the heads of their departments and asking: “How many cases have we processed? How much money is still tied up at the ministry?” It’s a complete mess: ministers who complain of having no money but who can’t even get a stack of paperwork moving.