Earthquakes: the budget halves for two years the seismic fund for public buildings and pushes the rest back to 2029

2 November 2026, 16:13

The budget bill for 2027, which reaches the Chamber of Deputies in these days, has found an elegant way to save on earthquake prevention: postpone it. Article 116 halves, in 2027 and 2028, the fund through which the State pays for seismic checks and works on public buildings, set up by the 2024 budget law, bringing it down from €60 million to €30 million a year. The money taken away does not disappear: it moves to 2029 and 2030, two years for which the fund previously had not a single euro. The technical report, the document that accompanies the text and works out its costs and revenues, is keen to point out that this is not a permanent cut, because «la modifica lascia invariata la dotazione complessiva del Fondo»: the change leaves the fund's overall allocation unchanged. It is merely a postponement, and the ground is kindly requested to respect it.

The administrations that were waiting for that money for their buildings will have to redo their sums: by 31 March 2027, the budget says, the decree that divides the fund among its recipients must be revised. The public buildings to be checked are still the same ones, and they stand exactly as before; the only thing that changes is the year in which someone will come to see whether they hold.

Three articles earlier, meanwhile, the same budget does find money, provided the earthquake has already happened: Article 113 grants L'Aquila an extraordinary contribution of €15 million, from 2027 to 2029, for the administrative needs linked to the 2009 earthquake. For the offices of a quake seventeen years ago, new funds arrive; to prepare buildings for the next one, the funds already promised are halved.

Spending little before and a great deal after is, after all, an old habit, and it has a price that everyone pays. From the earthquake in the Belice Valley, in Sicily, in 1968, to today, the State has allocated just over €135 billion for emergencies and reconstruction after the most serious earthquakes, and €20 billion of this should still be spent, up to 2047: the figures come from the research centre of the National Council of Engineers, which puts the average at more than €2 billion a year. The money comes out of the public budget, that is, from the taxes of those who live on fault lines and of those who have never seen one. For the Belice reconstruction, according to a 2014 study by the same centre, payments were due to continue until 2028: precisely the year in which, now, prevention stops at half.

Engineers have been asking for years for a plan to make buildings safe before the quake, with funding that is certain and stable over time. The budget has opted for stability: the overall amount stays exactly the same, and what may change, if anything, is the order in which the building site and the earthquake arrive.

The State has been paying for the Belice reconstruction for almost sixty years; for two years, it will fund prevention at half.

This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA on 1 November 2026.