The five regions of northern Italy – Emilia-Romagna, Liguria, Lombardy, Piedmont and Veneto – presented on Wednesday 23 September a common document on the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), the proposal for a European regulation to strengthen the industrial competitiveness of the continent. The Single Manufacturing District of the North developed a position paper on the draft report of the speakers of the European Parliament, sent on the same day to the Italian government, the State-Regions Conference and to all the MEPs elected in the constituencies of the five regions.
Requests to the European Parliament
At the heart of the document is the request for greater involvement of the regions in the definition of the so-called Industrial Manufacturing Acceleration Areas, which according to the District should include not only large industrial settlements, but also territorial ecosystems made up of SMEs, large companies, small mid-caps, business networks, clusters, universities and research centres.
The position paper also calls for strong administrative simplification: clearer procedures, certain authorization times and interoperable digital tools, without duplication or different applications between member states.
Particular attention is paid to the gradual introduction of European requirements, taking into account the actual availability of products and technologies on the market. An explicit reference concerns the automotive and components sector, indicated as a sector of fundamental importance for the District. Any exceptions, we read in the text, will have to consider the unavailability of the offer, the absence of technically compatible alternatives and manifestly disproportionate costs.
Subsidiarity, funds and monitoring
On the principle of subsidiarity, the document specifies that the requirements applied to public support schemes must take into account the characteristics of the individual instruments and the competences of the European, national, regional and local authorities, avoiding uniform rules that could reduce the effectiveness of the incentives.
On the financial front, the position paper proposes to strengthen coordination between cohesion policy and directly managed European instruments, with preferential criteria for projects included in areas of industrial acceleration and a possible revision of state aid regulations, with increases in aid intensities for strategic industrial investments.
Finally, the document calls for effective monitoring of the Iaa that takes into account the impacts on SMEs, on downstream sectors, on employment, on investments, on competitiveness and on the different territories, accompanied by the necessary flexibility of the tools to correct any asymmetric effects or application criticalities.