To carry out the new interventions linked to the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience, the Port System Authority of the Sea Eastern Adriatic has postponed the implementation of several projects for which it had already identified sources of funding, and planned implementation times, with a reversal of the order of the priorities that affected its overall capacity implementation and led to a slowdown in payments (from 20.8 to €9.1 million), as well as exceptional growth in residues from accrual (76.2 million). That's what highlights the Court of Auditors in the analysis, approved by resolution no. 93/2023, that the accounting magistrates of the Control Section entities have conducted on the 2021 management of the AdSP that manages the ports of Trieste and Monfalcone.

To the nine PNRR projects programmed by the AdSP - specifies the Court - four more were added in 2022, for a total total of €32.5 million committed (of which €24.2 million paid), on an amount of advances equal to 146 million. Projects are proceeding regularly according to schedule, notes the accounting magistracy.

The analysis also showed that on the reduced ability to plan interventions, control of Results and optimization of resources has also affected the prolonged vacancy of top figures in the staff, accentuated in following the absorption of the units of the Special Agency of the port of Monfalcone, incorporated in fact by the AdSP in 2020.

With reference to the size of the institution's staff, the The Court notes that 'at the organisational level, the dell'AdSP are all regularly in charge, while the 126 employees, of which five at fixed-term, is largely misaligned with respect to the qualifications provided for in the staff, with 17 uncovered in the staff of the middle managers and 14 supernumeraries among employees, out of a staff of 129 unit. The imbalance, which has been accentuated with absorption of the staff of the special company of the port of Monfalcone - explains The report of the accounting magistracy - has produced repeated assignments to higher duties and career progression, with possible repercussions on organizational and managerial capacity of the institution, as well as on the ability to plan interventions, control the results and optimize resources. For overcoming critical issues arising from staff shortages through more flexible personnel management, the new Company supplementary contract, approved by resolution no. 10 of 27 April 2022, provided for new forms of indemnity and insurance coverage, in relation to which the College of auditors and the vigilant ministry have called for an audit, intervened by resolution of the Management Committee no. 28 of 23 September 2022'.

"Personnel expenditure - continues the analysis of the Court of Auditors - is constantly increasing and the costs from Supplementary decentralised bargaining is the item of expenditure of more significant increase, with an annual average of 21.4% in the last three years. Its share of expenditure on Staff grew from 16.3% in 2019 to 21.4% in 2021. With regard to staff recruitment methods, the institution, despite repeated invitations from this Court and now also from the Vigilant ministry, does not appear to have yet modified its Rules of Procedure in so far as they provide for the selection of Candidates through the "qualifications and interview" mode instead of the "qualifications and exams" mode. Overall, the Court points out, operating costs in continued growth, reaching 24.5% of current expenditures. As also noted by the Vigilante Ministry, this percentage of expenditure appears excessively high.