The ‘little hands’ of Istat and its subsidiaries. Meloni lambasts those who ‘underestimate’. Budget chaos and a dig at Mattarella

The ‘little hands’ are back. There was no planning, in any sense of the word. State-owned companies added investments totalling 700 million euros without notifying the Ministry of Economy and Finance, public-private partnerships committed over an extra billion euros, without realising that the final was at stake, and then the Superbonus scams… What went wrong? The government has tightened its belt, but someone got the figures wrong. Listen to how Claudio Durigon, the League’s leader, describes this 3,079 per cent deficit-to-GDP ratio, which keeps Italy, once again, subject to infringement proceedings: “It’s a monstrous technical and bureaucratic error. It’s like playing well for ninety minutes, pressing down the flanks and hitting the post and crossbar, only to lose in the ninetieth minute. It’s as if the Italian national team were beaten by a Belgian third-tier side.” And now? “It can only be resolved politically, because we can’t pass a tight budget.” Will you go for a budget deviation? “We’ll do what needs to be done – everything.” Be warned that this figure could lead to an election in March. Minister Zangrillo of Forza Italia – a man who loves women who dress as they please – says: “Go to the polls early? You’re the ones saying that, but I think so too.” Minister, will you invoke the NEC, the energy clause? “We can’t invoke it.” Meloni had confided this in recent days: “I risk handing over a country with its accounts in order and not reaping the rewards of the work done over recent years.” The irony? Having asked Europe for the NEC – the energy safeguard clause – and greater budgetary flexibility (amounting to 14 billion), having received Europe’s approval, yet being unable to activate it so as not to add to the deficit. Except that… except that Europe – and this is Meloni’s intention – will not deduct the NEC from the deficit until Italy has exited the infringement procedure. Except that Italy, as Salvini demands, should make a budgetary deviation of billions, “because I’m not interested in the zero point something; as a ministry, I need eight billion in cash”. The parable: a country that gets hung up on the length of skirts and remains subject to infringement proceedings over a decimal point.

There are two major blacklists: one of officials said to have made mistakes, and one of saboteurs, the enemies of the people. In truth – and this is what is driving Meloni round the bend – there is actually a third one. The first includes the officials at the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF), the ones Rocco Casalino once described, for future reference, as the usual ‘bunch of s***’. The second comprises the mathematicians of this independent body, Istat, which, as such, is not accountable to ministers, but has consistently been labelled by this government as part of the ‘Five Star Movement camp’. It is a body – and the government is always quick to point this out – which ‘with this tax system would not have allowed us to join the euro’. Some within the majority even compare Istat’s experts to the judges of Magistratura Democratica, the ‘ideological calculator’. The third list comprises Giuseppe Conte’s allies, whom Meloni accuses of having blown the budget with the Superbonus (‘the biggest scam of the century’, to quote her). Giorgetti states in the official press release that “we take note, not without regret, of the final figures released by Istat on the deficit-to-GDP ratio”. We shall never name names, but a prominent figure in the government, on reading this comment, declared: “Giorgetti regrets it; we’re cursing”. Four years in government, rightly boasting about the beauty of balanced accounts; four years of measured budgets – yet now, after the election, are they offering up these ‘balanced accounts’? Then there is this windfall of 600 million euros, already collected by the Revenue Agency, relating to Superbonus fraud not factored into Istat’s calculations. This windfall has infuriated Francesco Filini in the Chamber of Deputies—Fazzolari’s successor—who describes these rules as “the apotheosis of Teutonic technicality” and the Superbonus as “the handicap we’ve been playing with for years”. All true, but how did we end up with what Durigon calls “a monstrous technical and bureaucratic error”? The Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) responds that “it was a delicate moment, but not everyone understood that”, and that it is impossible to keep track of every single item. To be specific: 1.3 billion comes from public-private partnerships, budgets which, according to the MEF, cannot be monitored right through to the end. The rules do not provide for this. The situation is different for state-owned companies that have finalised their accounts, exceeding by a wide margin the March forecasts contained in the DFP. A further 700 million euros comes from two state-owned companies, which are autonomous bodies but still fall under the MEF’s remit. These are ANAS and Ferrovie, which invested without notifying the authorities. Another paradox would be, as promised, to use the SAFE – the subsidised fund made available by Europe – to bolster defence, and not to use it for energy. Durigon adds: “It doesn’t matter now who made the mistake. What matters is getting the money in the coffers. I repeat, it will be resolved politically, through the deviation.” If Italy were to take this decision, would the EU agree? Even Meloni, speaking to a battered Bruno Vespa, uses the word “regret” regarding the failure to exit the infringement procedure, but it is in the next sentence that her true sentiment lies: “Every year, Istat revises its growth estimates upwards; perhaps they are being cautious. I don’t know whether Istat underestimates Italians or the government”. This line of thought is elaborated on in the internal memo, the FdI roadmap. It is the criticism of Istat, which “very often revises its previous GDP estimates, as indeed it has done in today’s note by revising the 2025 GDP figure upwards”, Istat itself, as the memo states, adding that “in all likelihood, we will discover in hindsight once again that Italy had already reached the three per cent threshold – the requirement for exiting the excessive deficit procedure”. Germany has a projected deficit of 3.7 per cent, France 5.1 per cent. It is not a catastrophe; on the contrary, it was merely an early exit, and as former minister Giovanni Tria says: “Not exiting the infringement procedure may well help Giorgetti to continue consolidating the accounts without having to make way for election spending”. We are heading straight back to those years, Tria’s years, those of the yellow-green government. Vannacci in Grillo’s place, Meloni asking Vannacci to clarify his remarks on Moscow – “shameful” – and Mattarella being taken to task (Meloni recalls that even Mattarella, when he was Minister of Education, drafted circulars advising against concentrating foreign pupils in the same class). Istat’s “little hand” is nothing other than our madeleine.