Public accounts, pensions, reforms: the post-vote dossiers

After an election campaign under the banner of forcibly closed taps for more than one 'consensus catching' measure, such as the €100 Befana mini-bonus or the cutting of waiting lists in healthcare, the government and the centre-right parties will not even have time to savour the victory or lick their wounds for the outcome of the European round, and even the administrative ones, in the wake of the closure of the polls.

Giorgia Meloni, once she has ascertained whether her majority will be able to match or surpass the result of the 2022 elections, will immediately turn her gaze on the negotiations for the formation of the new European Commission and for the choice of president, which could see the parties supporting her in Italy on different positions, on the G7 scheduled to take place in Puglia between 13 and 15 June and on the NATO summit in July. But the agenda of the urgencies and priorities of the executive and the majority is already flooded with 'hot' topics that have remained in the shadows during the election campaign, such as the state of public accounts, the definition of the next budget law, pensions, reforms and the issue of decree-laws. In the background then remains the nomination game. These are all challenges on which the new power relations in the centre-right will also have to be measured as a result of the ballot-box response, which could change the order of priorities or, at least, the way they are handled.

Precisely the management promises to be anything but simple. Starting from the delicate side of public accounts, where the executive will most likely be immediately faced with an infringement procedure for excessive deficit that should be decided by Brussels on 19 June. In recent weeks, European Commissioners Paolo Gentiloni and Valdis Dombrovskis have hinted that the start of the procedure will be triggered for several EU countries, including Italy. And Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, too, is aware of this. A positive result at the Europeans and, above all, the possible chance to weigh in the creation of the majority called to indicate the president of the Commission, could perhaps allow Giorgia Meloni to have some room for negotiation on the correction of the accounts and on the resources to be used for the budget law with which Palazzo Chigi aims to prolong the cut in the wedge, to continue the tax reform, as well as to cope with the so-called 'unchanged policies'.

The definition of the manoeuvre appears to be very complicated given also the need to reduce the public debt mass. Some positive signs are not lacking, such as the one coming from the revenues, which in April rose by 4-5 billion compared to the government's estimates. But in its latest survey, ISTAT confirmed weak growth for the two-year period 2024-25 (1% and 1.1% respectively), which is also substantially in line with that indicated by the government in April's Def, and inflation around 2%. Prior to the launch of the manoeuvre, the executive will also have to tackle the pension issue, which has in fact disappeared from the agenda in this first part of the year, but on which the OECD, IMF and the State General Accounting Office itself have urged the executive to maintain a course in the name of rigour and sustainability. And a less than brilliant result of the League, which is pushing hard on Quota 41 in order to face the 'after Quota 103' at the beginning of 2025, could allow the Mef and also Palazzo Chigi not to deviate from these coordinates.

The response from the ballot box could also have some repercussions on the path of another 'priority' of the Carroccio: differentiated autonomy. Between Tuesday 11 and Wednesday 12 June the text, which has already received the first green light from the Senate, should be examined by the Chamber of Montecitorio, where the oppositions are ready for battle. Like the resumption of the tough game in the Senate on the elective premierate, which Meloni also defended during the election campaign. The game should resume on Tuesday. But in the only 'effective month' of work before the summer recess, the chambers will also have to reckon with the risk of gridlock-decrees. Six are those already in the queue: cohesion policies, military personnel and Armed Forces operations, agricultural enterprises and enterprises of strategic interest, schools, waiting lists in health care and the so-called house decree. As early as 11 June, a seventh is expected to be added on reimbursements for movables damaged or destroyed by the May 2023 floods in Emilia Romagna and on the package for the G7 planned in Borgo Egnazia. Without considering that an eighth decree on the Campi Flegrei emergency is already on the launching pad.