Photovoltaic in the port, the TAR cancels the 9 million contract: “Excessive reduction and below the minimum wages”

They had won the green contract from the Port System Authority, but their offer was not economically sustainable: a monstrous reduction of 73.13% which, however, according to the State Attorney’s Office and the TAR judges, hid an almost certain request for variation with an increase in costs.

In particular the “staff costs lower than the ministerial minimum wages” and then the “alleged actual salary of 18 euros an hour” which according to the judges is unrealistic, given that such figures would trigger “disputes by INPS and Inail”.

A sentence that also opens an important glimpse into the procurement system in Italy and the disputed, but always widespread, practice of undercutting.

In this case it should be noted that the first to notice possible anomalies were the officials of the Port Authority who, at the end of December last year, had ordered the exclusion of the company that won the contract, the Consorzio Stabile Galileo of Ragusa together to the temporary grouping of Regran professionals.

A few weeks earlier, the tender relating to the integrated contract for the design and construction of photovoltaic systems in three lots of the ports of Genoa and Savona had ended, aimed at the electrification of the docks, one of the most important fronts of the green revolution calling for the EU and the various international agendas on environmental issues.

The contract is worth almost 9 million euros and is financed by the Pnrr.

Having detected the alleged anomalies, the Port Authority asked Galielo to review the offer but an agreement was not reached and the consortium, with the lawyer Guido Ottaviano, appealed to the Liguria Regional Administrative Court.

Paolo Piacenza, Commissioner of the Port Authority could have proceeded with assigning the contract to the second classified, also counting on the legal shield for the Pnrr works – as already happened for the new dam – but he preferred to wait for the ruling of the TAR, although an appeal to the Council of State is not excluded.

It is possible that prudence is linked both to the fear of having to pay any compensation in the event of defeat on appeal, but also to a particular circumstance: the second ranked is Iren, or the multi-utility of which Paolo Signorini is now CEO who, when it was once the now contested contract was announced, he was still president of the Port Authority.

In any case, before the judges the position of Palazzo San Giorgio and the Ministry of the Environment was defended and argued by the State Attorney Maria Chiara Ghia, and concerned the inconsistency of the consortium’s offer with respect to the cost of labor – therefore the salaries of workers and technicians – and then the attempt to separate the costs of the definitive design from the executive one.

But in the ruling the judges agreed with the Lawyer’s Office on the fact that the cost of personnel was “also inclusive of the design activity, in this case carried out to a significant extent by employed workers, denying the thesis supported by the appellant”.

The Galileo Consortium also stigmatized the fact that most of the disputes concerned the design phase, but the Court responded by highlighting the importance of this phase, since “the congruity and reliability of the design inevitably reverberate on the execution of the contract and affect its timing, putting at risk both the achievement of the result and the assignment of the Pnrr funds which are not disbursed in the event of failure to execute the contract within the expected timeframe”.

Finally, a dig at the declared hourly rate paid to the workers: “the alleged ‘effective’ salary of 18 euros per hour indicated in the appeal is devoid of any explanation as to the reasons that would determine this amount which, therefore, is totally unjustified” .