Not enacting NRRP a problem says Gentiloni on Soviet jibe

(ANSA) - ROME, AUG 23 - Not enacting Italy's commitments under the massive EU-funded post-COVID National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) would be a problem, European Economic Affairs Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni said in reply to a jibe from Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti who said some of the NRRP training schemes smacked of Soviet-era planning.
    "That the NRRP is made up of Soviet interventions seems to me a joke; after all I know Minister Giorgetti and his jokes wel," said Gentiloni at a press conference at the annual high-profile Rimini meeting of influential lay Catholic activist group Communion and Liberation (CL), where Giorgetti had made his Soviet plan quip earlier in the day.
    "It's a very important thing for Italy, it's 190 billion Eurobonds: near here there is the Rubicon, there was the crossing of the Rubicon by the European Union on the issue of Eurobonds and you know that Italy is the main beneficiary.
    "Of course, if we were unable to spend this money, to implement these investments, then there would be a problem of bureaucracy, but on our part, not on the part of those who imagined the projects, i.e. the Italian governments and those who authorised them, i.e. the European Commission". (ANSA).