2027 Budget, party pledges and funding sources still not indicated

The 2027 budget law is the last budget of the legislature: general elections are scheduled for 2027, and this alone explains why the discussion within the majority started from the measures rather than from the resources. The three available accounts — Linkiesta, Panorama and the English edition of Il Sole 24 Ore — converge on one point: the proposals are defined, the funding sources are not.

The three requests on the table

The picture of the majority parties’ demands is as follows.

Proposal	Who supports it	Stated cost
Halt to the increase in pension requirements linked to life expectancy	Lega	approximately 1.1 billion for the first increment
Incremental flat tax	Forza Italia	not indicated
Irpef rate at 33% up to 60,000 euros	Fratelli d’Italia	not indicated

The pension figure is the only one accompanied by an estimate: approximately 1.1 billion to neutralize the first increment linked to life expectancy. For the two fiscal measures, the available material does not report figures, and we will not construct them ourselves: an estimate invented in a newspaper article has the same typographical appearance as an official estimate, and this is why this newspaper does not produce one.

European flexibility

The parliamentary step already taken, however, is documented: the Chamber and the Senate voted the resolution authorizing the government to activate the national safeguard clause, and the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti announced that Italy will request up to 36 billion in flexibility over the three-year period.

The figure should be read for what it is: a request, not a concession. Flexibility within the European framework is not money that arrives, it is borrowing space that is permitted. If granted, it allows measures to be financed without cutting other spending; it does not reduce the debt that results from it.

The revision by the Parliamentary Budget Office

The second new element is the revision of the growth estimates. The Parliamentary Budget Office raised the 2026 GDP growth forecast from 0.5% to 0.9%, confirming 0.6% for 2027.

A decimal point of GDP, in a budget, is not an academic detail: it enters the accounts as the basis for calculating revenue and as the denominator of the ratios with debt. But the revision concerns the current year, while the budget is being drafted for the following year, for which the estimate has remained fixed at 0.6%. The accounting benefit, in other words, comes mainly from the starting point, not from the horizon over which spending occurs.

The knot holding the three proposals together

The three measures have one characteristic in common: they are all reductions in revenue or postponements of savings. The freeze on pension requirements does not cut future pensions, it pushes forward a saving already written into spending trends. The extension of the 33% Irpef rate up to 60,000 euros reduces revenue on the affected bracket. The incremental flat tax reduces taxation on income increases.

None of the sources consulted indicate, at this stage, the revenue or spending items intended to finance them. This is why the budget season is measured not by August’s announcements but by autumn’s documents: the Ragioneria’s sign-off, the technical report, the articles of the bill.

What we do not know

We do not know the funding sources, we do not know the cost of the two fiscal measures, we do not know whether and to what extent the flexibility request will be accepted in Brussels. We know that the first pension increment costs approximately 1.1 billion to neutralize, that 2027 growth is estimated at 0.6% and that the government has already obtained from Parliament the mandate to request up to 36 billion in fiscal space over the three-year period.