Milan, Oriana (Aspesi): "The construction blockade risks losing 3% of GDP."

The construction blockade in Milan threatens to ruin approximately 4,500 families who have already invested money or taken out mortgages without owning a home. The situation also threatens to ruin numerous businesses linked to the stalled construction sites, ruining a staggering amount of billions in investments, worth up to 3 percentage points of GDP. The alarm is being raised by Federico Filippo Oriana, president of Aspesi Unione Immobiliare, the association of Italian real estate companies that brings together companies investing in the enhancement, development, and redevelopment of buildings and building sites, as well as companies and professional firms in architecture, engineering, general contracting, and real estate services, construction-related industries, property companies, and industry associations.

"The investments currently blocked amount to approximately €5 billion," Oriana explains to Adnkronos, "but, considering the entire construction and industrial sector, sector research centers have estimated the potential overall economic damage at €38 billion over the next five years. This is why it is urgently necessary to resolve the problems of families, but also the situation of businesses, since we are in the same boat." To date, it has been calculated that 4,525 apartments are blocked, equal to the same number of households. If multiplied by the average occupancy rate in Milan of 2.7 people per apartment, this equates to more than 12,000 people without a home. "The problem of families," Oriana states, "is completely blameless, because they bought, because they could buy. But businesses also sold, because they could sell, that is, they had all the rights and conditions."

Then, following the halt in the urban planning investigation, which has so far led to six arrests and the suspension of dozens of ongoing or planned projects and investments, "the companies have had to halt their operations. We're talking about an entire supply chain made up of sponsoring companies, downstream of which are construction companies, industrial firms, workers, professionals, and families. Companies in debt to the banks that risk bankruptcy if they don't resume work immediately." Among these, "there's already the case of a company, not one of our associates, that's been placed in bankruptcy proceedings, and another, ours, but whose name I can't reveal, that's facing a million-euro penalty: if the contractor isn't allowed back on the construction site by November 15th, the company will be forced to pay them a penalty of around €10 million."

The entire real estate supply chain—that is, the entire workforce involved in constructing, furnishing, and managing buildings—is the primary sector of the Italian economy and, along with construction, industrial production of furnishings, materials, systems, and real estate services, accounts for approximately 30% of the Italian economy. If the system isn't restarted immediately, investments at risk over the next five years are at least €38 billion, equivalent to over 1.6% of GDP. However, if the entire private construction supply chain in Italy were to stall due to regulatory uncertainty surrounding building replacement transactions, it could easily result in a loss of 3 percentage points of GDP spread over the next five years—a truly unsustainable disaster for the Italian economy, even in the European context.

In this situation, the Aspesi president further reflects, the greatest crisis is uncertainty, the lack of knowledge about what is or will be legal or not: "This matter," he says, "has been going on for 19 months; 19 months rooted in uncertainty both about the administrative regulations governing real estate and construction, and about the resulting civil implications, namely, with our clients. And in the Association, we also believe that criminal law is not the appropriate tool for addressing issues of interpreting the legislation, because it has a different institutional purpose: to punish criminal behavior in bad faith."

To clarify, "It's as if I went to the hospital for admission and signed a form, only to find out that the form was illegitimate because the hospital had made a mistake in drafting it. I can understand if they kicked me out of the hospital because the form was illegitimate, but I certainly don't expect them to report me and send me to court for signing a form the hospital had provided me. And that's exactly what happened to our members. They went to the City Hall and were told, 'Sign right there, that's the procedure for demo-reconstruction.' What were they supposed to do? They certainly couldn't be the ones challenging Milan's PGT. It was also widely known that national, regional, and local regulations had deliberately provided incentives for building replacements because they were beneficial to the area, but more expensive due to the necessary demolitions and remediation."

What the entrepreneurs are therefore demanding is a legislative solution: "The only real way out of this mess is a state law that resolves the situation," Oriana states. "A state law has two fundamental virtues compared to any local solution: the first is that it doesn't discriminate between different situations, for example, between a seized construction site and a construction site that never started, but saves them all; the second, irreplaceable virtue of a law of the Republic is that it gives the sector a future."

Moreover, "the State cannot limit itself to simply unblocking the past, albeit necessary, but must establish once and for all how urban regeneration is achieved in this country, with what procedures and how much tax to be paid to municipalities. Rome and Milan are in enormous need of urban regeneration; in Milan alone, there are 204 abandoned sites in a municipality of just 183 square kilometers, and I don't think anyone seriously wants them to remain there in decay. They can't tell us to act one way and then have to do it another. We want certainty, both for the past and for the future. And this," he concludes, "can only be provided by a national law."