Italy’s new government to place focus on green transition

Italy’s new government has established a ministry that combines energy policy with the environmental portfolio, signalling the country’s commitment to a recovery from the COVID-19 crisis based on a green energy transition.

The Ministry for Ecological Transition in Italy’s new government will be headed by physicist Roberto Cingolani, the founder of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa.

Italy can count on EUR 70 billion of EU funds for the green transition

The newly-formed government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi is now expected to revise the country’s recovery plan and submit it to the European Commission by April. Italy can count on over EUR 200 billion of the EU’s COVID-19 recovery funds, EUR 70 billion of which must go towards the ecological transition.

At the first meeting of his cabinet on Saturday, Draghi, a former European Central Bank president, said that Italy will now have an “ecological government.”

By forming a ministry for ecological transition, Italy is following in the footsteps of France and Spain, which already have such ministries.