Italian deficit above 3%: maneuver and escape clause at risk

A few hours after the Istat verdict, expected at 10 this morning, the task of seeing the 2025 deficit crushed below 3% of GDP to exit the EU procedure for excessive deficits appears complicated. The possibility of "free" use of the safeguard clause of the EU Pact depends on that data, which allows Italy to plan a deficit of up to 36 billion in two years for investments in energy (14 billion) and defense (22); and the overall dimensions of the maneuver therefore depend.

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But above all, what is at stake is a political objective cherished by the Government for some time, and which was surprisingly missed in April, crowning a fiscal discipline which has already achieved more than one success on the markets and among the rating agencies. The possible confirmation that the deficit did not stop before the Maastricht threshold could also create some complications for the budget law, the last one before the vote: not directly, because the procedure today has not led to sanctions, and therefore its abandonment does not in itself free up resources. But remaining in the corrective arm can generate second thoughts about the activation of the extra-trade deficit for energy and defence, and therefore about the triangulation which, by loading onto the exemption some expenses already foreseen in the trends, frees up margins for new measures: as happened last year with the remodulation of the Pnrr, which in this way had offered 5.1 billion to the budget law.

The unknowns come from the numbers, which have occupied the calculators until the end. In April, Istat had calculated a 2025 deficit at 3.073% of GDP, i.e. 1.64 billion above 3% and 2.99 billion above 2.94% which, rounded off, according to the orthodox interpretation guarantees compliance with the Maastricht threshold, for which countries must maintain a deficit "below" 3% of the product. Important figures, more than the second decimal after the decimal point on which they affect would suggest.

What had thrown Italian balances offside was yet another coup de theater of the Superbonus, which in the end had swelled to 8.4 billion: four times more than the Government's estimates. Such liveliness, which emerged ex post with the taxpayers' communications, immediately appeared suspicious, to the point of engaging the Revenue Agency and the Financial Police in an immediate big hunt for illegitimate tax credits: already in the first three months of the year, 4.1 billion in fake bonuses had been discovered, partly discounted in the April figure. The work is still in progress, but the rules of the European statistical system require the framework to be frozen at a certain date: with the possible consequence of measuring a deficit higher than the actual one, because it is also made up of tax discounts in the process of being cancelled.

It was said that the consequences of using the clause for energy and defense depend on this morning's table. Because according to EU rules, only the farewell to the corrective arm of the Pact allows the additional deficit to be excluded from the calculations of the relevant balances, which in other cases remains in the calculation, further complicating the drop below 3%. A stumble could therefore revive political doubts about the activation of the clause, especially in the (majority) part dedicated to defense: which represents a strategic hub in Europe subject to the growing weight of Russian hybrid attacks, but is not exactly a consensus multiplier, a precious asset a few months away from a very uncertain vote.