Conti, green light for the EU plan. Giorgetti: «Clouds on the horizon»

The program of accounts to be sent to Brussels by tomorrow evening gets a green light on confidence from the Council of Ministers. The stamp placed yesterday by the government meeting is essential to start the Dpb machine, the budget planning document to be submitted for examination by the European Commission. But the passage is stingy with numbers.

The figures will only begin to take shape with the actual sending of the text to Brussels and its publication. The note released last night by the Government simply reiterates that the Document confirms all the programmatic objectives of the Prime Ministerial Decree approved in the morning by the Chambers, including the rates of increase in net spending with or without the safeguard clause. The trajectory is in line with the ceilings agreed with the EU and, in addition to the exemption for energy and defence, therefore does not offer additional deficit margins for other measures.

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The minister's alert

The whole system remains pending negotiations with the EU on flexibility and methods of use of the clause.

Even yesterday, Giancarlo Giorgetti made a point of putting the brakes on and warning everyone about the risk of dark times ahead. «There are big clouds on the horizon», the Minister of Economy warned earlier in the morning when explaining to the Chamber the Budget Planning Document (Dpfp, domestic version of the program of which the Dpb for the EU constitutes a more detailed evolution). «When the weather report announces a storm - he told Montecitorio -, before going out into the open sea it is best to check the conditions of the boat».

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The cover game

Reflections of this kind build the mantra that Giorgetti has been following for weeks, and which he repeated on Monday in the majority meeting and in the hearing of the Budget commissions, before reiterating them yesterday in an almost deserted Chamber of the Chamber. “They don't want to work,” the account holder blurted out to those who pointed out the almost total absence of the deputies at the start of the work, shortly after 9am and therefore well after dawn. The same music resonated in the evening at Palazzo Chigi, helping to smooth over some corners in the majority on the collection of funds to be allocated to the measures.

The numbers speak clearly. Alongside the 14.4 billion euros per year of extra deficit from the clause, divided in half between energy and defence, the boundaries of the ordinary maneuver are very narrow.

The coverage column is struggling to reach a target set at around 7-8 billion (yesterday's Il Sole 24 Ore), a third of the already light budget law passed last year.

In such a shortage, and without being able to count on deficit margins outside the clause, it is difficult to raise political vetoes on possible sources of revenue. This is confirmed by the openness on the contribution to be requested from banks and insurance companies which came yesterday from the Italian deputy prime minister Antonio Tajani, who took to the barricades against the hypothesis of setting aside the Irpef cut for the middle class, which should raise the income threshold of the rate to 33 percent from 50 thousand to 60 thousand euros per year.

In addition to finance, the bill will also be presented to energy companies, based on the principle relaunched by Giorgetti himself according to which "all those who can will contribute". The diviners' wand of Via XX Settembre also points to the gaming concessionaires, who could be asked for a billion in two years divided between the extensions of the concessions on betting, bingo and slots and the Scratch & Win competition for 2028.

The next steps

All this is the necessary, but not sufficient, condition to start a maneuver that must decide between Irpef cuts, fragile bonuses on health expenses, birth aid and interventions on bills. For this last chapter, the Government returns to call on the EU, to draw resources from the clause for direct aid to families. The characteristics of the maneuver will depend on the European response: they will begin to be seen in a couple of weeks, before arriving in the Chamber around October 28th.