The Democratic Party has denounced the blockade of investments in ports and the new commissioning of the Authorities of the Port System implemented by imposing by the government the provisional exercise of the 2026 budgets to the port authorities. "The decision of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport to impose the provisional exercise of the 2026 budgets on the Authorities of the Port System - said Valentina Ghio, vice president of the PD Group in the Chamber and member of the Transport Commission, which submitted a question for written answer to the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport together with Barbagallo, Bakkali, Casu, Morassut, Pandolfo and Pastorino - represents an act which paralyzes Italian ports and compromises their development capacity at a crucial stage for the competitiveness of the country".

"With the limitation of monthly spending to a twelfth of the appropriations provided for each chapter - explained Ghio referring to the measure which, in the context of the provisional exercise, limits monthly up to 1/12 of the sums provided for the year excluding non-deferrable expenses and those already - port authorities are effectively prevented from make investments, start new works, call for tenders and implement the medium and long-term strategies already approved in the budgets. It's an unprecedented compression of range and of the function of these bodies. We are facing a real commissioning of the Port System Authorities, which prevents the new port presidents from fully exercising their mandate received. A reform - continued Ghio referring to the draft law for the reorganization of the rules on the Port governance approved in recent days by the Government ( of 22 December 2025, ed.) - which comes immediately after the birth of Porti d'Italia S.p.A. and the hypothesis of using the leftovers of the Authorities of the System as an initial financial endowment. So the ports risk being transformed into a simple safe, subtracting resources from territories, workers, businesses and communities local ones".

"The government - concluded the Party representative Democratic - immediately clarify whether this choice is functional to set aside resources for the new company to the detriment of the development of Italian ports. The port is a strategic infrastructure of the country and cannot be bent to a centralist logic that it mortifies autonomy, blocks investments and weakens the competitiveness of the national logistics system".

For Davide Natale, secretary of the PD of Liguria, and Matteo Bianchi, responsible for the economy of the secretariat of the PD of the Liguria, the decision to impose the provisional exercise of the budgets represents "the appetizer of the Rixi reform: Authority of the Port System in provisional operation. The Salvini-Rixi couple - accused Natale and Bianchi - represents the real brake for the port and logistics development of our country, making the territories annoying if not useless frills. Not even a bureaucrat Bourbon of the 1800s would have made such centralist and far from the needs of the territories and the ports. The decision to oblige the Port System Authorities to the provisional financial year until next April 30 has as its main consequence is to block the start of important projects, dealing a heavy blow to the companies that are waiting for answers in a certain and rapid timeframe, to the workers who hoped for a relaunch of the sector and local administrations, headquarters of the ports, which were waiting for investments to be made for better city-port coexistence. A triple damage whose contours are still to be defined. A political and administrative madness that probably only serves as an accounting device to finance the birth of the future Porti d'Italia Spa".

"We fear that if it is not restored as soon as possible possible ordinary management and if Parliament does not correct heavily the reform text born of the Lega - they have Christmas and Bianchi - a tremendous blow will be dealt competitiveness and development of Italian ports. The our concern is that instead of moving towards a greater coordination and unitary and forward-looking policies, we go towards a system in which the future of the individual port is decided only at ministerial level and with impositions, without dialogue with the territories and the social and economic world. Unacceptable."

The Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport replied with a note in which it is noted that "the reconstructions journalistic reports circulated in these hours on the subject of the provisional data of the Port System Authorities are far from the reality of the facts and based on a misreading and instrumental of the measures taken. There is - he has highlighted the ministry - no commissioning, neither formal nor substantial, of Italian ports. It is exclusively of a technical-administrative step, in line with the provisions by the system and with the practice of this dicastery which in the context of the of each financial year has - always - authorized the provisional exercise in the absence of all the relevant opinions. The decisions taken are in fact part of a path that sees the involvement of the Ministry of Economy and Finance for the issuance of the necessary competent opinion for the evaluations of economic and financial nature to guarantee proper management of public resources and which is aimed at ensuring the administrative continuity of the entity with regard to the compulsory and non-deferrable expenses".

"Talking about 'de facto commissioning' - concludes the MIT note - means proposing an interpretation baseless only aimed at fueling confusion and alarmism unjustified in the sector. Ports continue to operate regularly, in full compliance with the regulations in force and with the objective of ensuring stability, development and competitiveness of the national port system".

If it is true that, as the Ministry asserts, in recent years years the authorization for the provisional exercise of the budget for the first four months of the year has been several times requested by the port authorities and granted numerous times, the peculiarity seems to be that this year the measure is has been imposed on all 16 Port Authorities. This is perhaps because - if we really don't want to think badly as the PD does by bringing up the need to provide for the financial allocation of the Ports of Italy still in conception - the necessary opinion of competence to which the MIT refers, which also involves the MEF, It has not yet arrived. In which case it is MIT itself to attribute responsibility for the taxation of the provisional exercise to the government and to the parties that have argue, if only because of the extreme slowness with which it has been taken out of the commissioner management of many Authorities of the Port System with the appointment of the presidents of these bodies, a process that was only concluded at the end of 2025.