EU holds up Italian stadium projects

The European Commission is holding up Italy's recovery cash over disagreement about the eligibility of certain investments — including two sports stadiums.

Italy, the EU post-pandemic recovery fund’s largest beneficiary with over €190 billion allocated, is a bellwether for its success, and so is being closely watched.

The Rome government wants to use some of the cash, designed to help boost Europe's economies after COVID, to upgrade Fiorentina's 1930s football stadium and to build a new one near Venice.

Upgrading Florence football stadium is Mayor Dario Nardella’s pet project. He secured €95 million in EU and national funds to refurbish the old and now dilapidated Artemio Franchi venue, home of Fiorentina. The stadium, built in the early 1930s, is considered a “major national cultural infrastructure.”  It is used on the pages of Italian passports.   In 2021 it was declared a protected landmark.

The reinforced concrete stadium, owned by the city of Florence, was designed and built by architect and civil engineer Pier Luigi Nervi in the 1930s.  It was considered a technological marvel at the time.

Fiorentina owner Rocco Commisso, an Italian-born US cable tv magnate, who paid €170m to buy the club in 2019, wanted to build a new state of the art stadium at the Franchi site at his own expense.

Venice’s project, known as “Sports Forest” and including a basketball stadium and an sports arena, would be a new development 10 km from Venice’s port, and require a new highway link connecting it to the city and the airport — for a total project cost of over €300 million, of which over €90 million would come from recovery funds.  

“The Sports Forest will be an engine of urban regeneration and revitalisation of Venice and the Veneto region. With the construction of the Arena and the new Stadium Venice is a candidate to host sporting events of great international appeal,” Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, who is also the owner of the local basketball team, said when unveiling the project.

The issue raised by the Commission is the eligibility of these project under the recovery plan's budget line, which aims to “regenerate, revitalize and enhance large degraded urban areas.” 

The Franchi stadium, built in the fourth most expensive neighborhood in central Florence, doesn’t fit the bill, and considering Venice's greenfield site an urban regeneration project is too much of a stretch, according to EU officials who declined to be named