L'intervento pubblico a sostegno dell'economia

The Italian State has implemented numerous interventions to support the economy in response to the crisis produced by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the reactivity and capacity of economic policy have become crucial. Are administrative offices capable of managing aid, or must they make use of the help of third parties, such as publicly held companies? What is the distance between normative prefiguration and actual data, taking into consideration the actor implementing the measures? This article, which addresses these and other issues, is divided as follows. First, it provides the coordinates of the current European discipline on State support for the economy, within which the national measures have been introduced. This is followed by three parts. The first one reconstructs the support mechanisms introduced in Italy. The second one analyses those envisaged in Germany and France, for comparative purposes. The third one considers certain worrisome trends on using public funds to respond to the current crisis and makes proposals to improve the quality and efficiency of State action in this field.