Arianna Meloni loses her train of thought on the 3.1 per cent deficit

The government’s row with Istat over the failure to bring the 2025 deficit below 3 per cent has been fuelled by detailed allegations. Arianna Meloni, head of the FdI political secretariat and sister of the Prime Minister, said in an interview with Corriere della Sera that “we will almost certainly discover in 2027 that we were already below 3 per cent in 2025” because Istat revises its estimates upwards: “In 2025, it emerged that the 2023 figures had been underestimated by 53 billion”. The certainty of the forecast for next year is somewhat of a gamble. This is because the substantial increase in 2023 GDP is not the result of a routine revision, but of a so-called ‘general revision’ or benchmarking exercise, which takes place every five years across Europe, following a harmonisation policy developed by Eurostat and the ECB. The last such revision took place in 2024, involving the complete reconstruction of historical time series from a base year (2021), and the next one will be in 2029. In any case, even a substantial rise in GDP of 53 billion euros would not be sufficient to bring the 2025 deficit below the 3 per cent of GDP threshold.

The other accusation levelled at Istat – which is more detailed and backed up by figures – does not concern the denominator but the numerator of the ratio: the debt. “The Istat figure that is currently preventing us from exiting the infringement procedure by 0.08 per cent – equivalent to around 680 million – is an estimate,” argues Arianna Meloni. “But we already know that there are 650 million in the coffers recovered from Superbonus fraud, which have not yet been accounted for by the Revenue Agency.” Let’s do some quick calculations on a napkin, as the Americans say. Because when questioning the work of statisticians, it is important to be precise.

Even assuming that Istat were to remove 650 million that has not been ‘accounted for’, the debt would fall from 69,736 to 69,086 million, which, against a GDP of 2,265,003 million, would bring the deficit down from 3.08 to 3.0501 per cent. This figure, when rounded, remains—by a hair’s breadth—3.1 per cent. Arianna then states that to exit the procedure, 0.08 per cent of GDP—“equivalent to 680 million”—is required. However, 680 million equals 0.03 per cent, not 0.08 per cent. By deducting 680 million, the debt would fall from 69,736 to 69,056 million, equal to 3.048 per cent of GDP, which, when rounded, this time comes to the much-coveted 3 per cent. However, this is still not enough to bring Italy out of the infringement procedure because, even when rounded, it remains just above 3 per cent. Whereas, according to European rules, the deficit must be just ‘below’ the reference value of 3 per cent of GDP.

Therefore, to exit the procedure early, the deficit would have had to stand at 2.99 per cent, i.e. 0.09 percentage points lower: 2 billion (2,038 million). Three times 680 million. Not one, but three threads of Ariadne. It is those 2.5 billion (2,488 million) in extra expenditure, which came to light three days ago, that have prevented Italy from finding its way out of the labyrinth of the infringement procedure. It is not Istat’s fault that the government has lost track of the accounts.