Genoa workers forced to hand back 60%

The men making the concrete caissons for Genoa's new breakwater were allegedly paid, and then made to give much of the money back. According to investigators, workers at the Vado Ligure facility handed 40% to 60% of their wages to labour intermediaries. On 26 June, the Savona prosecutor's office and the Carabinieri arrested eight people and placed two companies under judicial control (Il Fatto Quotidiano, La Voce di Genova).

The charges are illegal labour intermediation and exploitation. The site was producing prefabricated sections for Genoa's new breakwater. Workers were also allegedly told to buy their own safety equipment, while investigators suspect that safety certificates for high-risk construction work were falsified (IVG).

These are allegations in an active investigation, not findings established in court. But the case points to a weakness in the EU's post-pandemic spending system: it can follow milestones more easily than it can follow workers.

The Genoa breakwater is a €1.3bn infrastructure project financed through Italy's fondo complementare al PNRR, a national fund that sits alongside Italy's recovery plan (Port of Genoa). That recovery plan is part of the EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility, or RRF, the post-pandemic programme through which Brussels releases money to member states when they deliver agreed reforms and investments (EUR-Lex).

The breakwater money comes from the national complementary fund rather than directly from EU grants. Even so, the project belongs to the same delivery architecture. Italy is the RRF's largest beneficiary, with a plan worth €194.4bn in grants and loans (European Commission). At that scale, control is not an administrative detail. It is the whole question.

Brussels checks milestones, not worksites

The RRF was built to push reforms and protect the EU budget. It was not built to inspect construction sites.

Brussels checks whether Italy has delivered what it promised: a reform passed, a project started, a target reached. If the Commission is satisfied, payment can be authorised. Under the RRF Regulation, member states carry the first responsibility for preventing fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest (EUR-Lex).

The EU has specialist bodies for wrongdoing. OLAF, the anti-fraud office, investigates fraud involving EU money. EPPO, the European Public Prosecutor's Office, can prosecute crimes affecting the EU's financial interests (EPPO).

But neither is a labour inspectorate. The gap lies between Brussels' payment checklist and the worker several subcontracting layers below the main contract. The EU system does not routinely check whether that worker was paid what he was owed, or trained as he should have been.

A pattern, not an outlier

The Genoa allegations sit in a wider record. Reuters reporting has described how subcontracting chains and labour intermediaries in Italian construction, logistics and fashion squeeze wages and strip protections from workers (MarketScreener/Reuters). Politiken, the Danish newspaper, covered the case through migrant-worker rights, describing "slave-like conditions" and moving the focus from criminal process to human cost (Politiken).

Italy is not alone in this problem. Swedish research on criminal economies in public procurement found that abuse tends to enter through weak contract follow-up and poor payment monitoring, rather than through dramatic takeovers of projects (ESF Sweden).

A recent European Court of Auditors report also pointed to gaps in anti-fraud strategies linked to RRF controls, asking whether milestone-based payments give enough traceability over where the money actually goes (ECA SR 2026-18). The vulnerability is built into the model. The same milestone system that stops Brussels from micromanaging national spending also limits what it can see inside delivery chains.

The deadline tightens the tension

Italy must complete its milestones and targets by August 2026 if it is to submit its final RRF payment request by December 2026 (CGIL). That kind of deadline rewards visible progress. It can also push the lowest tiers of subcontracting further out of sight.

The missing pieces are still basic ones: the full subcontractor map, the payment chain, and any decision on whether the case remains a national criminal file or prompts wider scrutiny. The RRF can certify that a breakwater was built. Whether the people who built it were paid and protected remains, for now, someone else's problem.