Vannacci’s economic policy is very much reminiscent of the left

A lengthy policy document has appeared on the Futuro Nazionale website, which helps to clarify the new party’s positions. On the surface, FN’s rhetoric is common to many conservative right-wing groups: it draws on the social doctrine of the Church, economic freedom and the creation of a ‘society of property owners’. It promises lower taxes and more private enterprise, along with a reduction in bureaucracy and tax simplification. However, when it comes to concrete proposals, the veneer of economic conservatism begins to crack. Indeed, whilst acknowledging that ‘the state’s role is not to replace the market, but to create conditions favourable to development’, it states that ‘in sectors crucial to economic sovereignty, productive continuity and technological autonomy, the state must nevertheless exercise a role of guidance, guarantee and proportionate oversight, always with the aim of safeguarding and pursuing the common good’. In the dock are ‘globalisation dominated by multinationals and international finance’ and the ‘ordo-liberal ideology, whose compatibility with the pursuit of the common good has now been disproved by the facts’. Whilst this is the conceptual framework, the practical unfolding of the argument seems to transport the reader into a debate taking place within Campo Largo.

For Vannacci, the first obstacle to overcome is the “even tighter constraints on our capacity to spend on productive investments” resulting from the “disastrous signing by the Meloni Government of the new European Stability and Growth Pact” (“the Stability Pact is a bad compromise for Italy”, Elly Schlein had argued at the time). Therefore, Fn “proposes the establishment of the Sovereign Fund for National Growth as a strategic investment instrument designed to support infrastructure, energy, innovation, advanced technologies, research, venture capital and the capitalisation of Italian businesses” (“We need a €100 billion sovereign fund”, said Giuseppe Conte). Furthermore, the Futurists call for fiscal money “as a complementary instrument of economic policy”: no party today is openly in favour of such an instrument – an idea that poses obvious compatibility issues with remaining in the euro – but for a long time it has been a key policy of the Five Star Movement (as well as the League). It was the Five Star Movement, with the support of the PD, that managed to implement something similar with the transferable tax credit for the building super-bonus. It will come as no surprise to anyone to discover that incentives for renovations are also included in the Fn’s programme.

To boost employment recovery, Vannacciani’s supporters would like to “allow retirement after 41 years of actual contributions”: ‘Quota 41’ is a long-standing proposal by the Lega, but a motion by the PD (led by Arturo Scotto) in January 2026 has adopted it as its own, accusing the government of failing to uphold it and calling on it “to take steps to review the decision to raise the age requirements for retirement and to abolish the mechanism for periodic review”. To stimulate economic growth, Fn speaks of “strengthening domestic demand and national production, supporting productivity and fostering the creation of new wealth through work, enterprise, innovation and productive investment”. To this end, “industrial policy [is] an essential tool for strengthening the country’s competitiveness, economic security and productive capacity”. These are positions that are echoed exactly within the PD. Indeed, Vannacci’s supporters complain that “the only exemptions granted by a European Commission that is too subservient to Germany were those relating to expenditure on European rearmament and the Green Deal”. Similarly, in a letter to Il Foglio, Andrea Orlando and Simone Oggionni (PD) denounced the “limitations, hesitations and risks” of the new EU industrial policy, “the foremost of which is equating industrial policy with national rearmament”.

The Green Deal is the only real issue on which the divide between Fn and Campo Largo appears unbridgeable. But is it really? On renewables, Vannacci calls for “advance planning, prioritising sites already compromised or offshore solutions where these are environmentally and scenically sustainable, and stable compensation for the areas hosting the infrastructure”. This sounds very similar to what Schlein is calling for (“One of our ideas is this: to stipulate that, wherever there is a power plant, a proportion of the energy produced should go to small and medium-sized enterprises and households, with discounts on their bills”).

Perhaps the differences on environmental issues can be offset by agreement on other matters, such as aid to Ukraine, where Vannacci’s positions are the same as those of Avs and the M5S. Even on energy, the General’s proposal (“reopening the possibility of purchasing gas at favourable prices from Russia”) is the same as Conte’s. The Campo Largo coalition is struggling to hold together political figures who hold opposing views on practically everything: could it ever be a problem to welcome those who, on economic policy, are aligned and on the same page?