MELONI, THE SUBJECT: THE LONGEST-SERVING GOVERNMENT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC. THE OBJECT:

A government can survive.

A government can remain popular.

A government can dominate parliament.

A government can communicate effectively.

A government can reassure financial markets.

And yet none of those things, by themselves, prove that it has transformed the economy it governs.

This distinction matters now more than ever.

Meloni has achieved something genuinely unusual in the notoriously unstable history of the Italian Republic: political continuity.

But continuity is an input.

It is not an economic output.

The relevant question is therefore no longer whether Giorgia Meloni has succeeded politically in remaining in office.

She clearly has.

The question is what Italy has received economically in exchange for almost four years of unusually stable government.

To answer that, ideology is almost useless.

We need GDP.

Real wages.

Productivity.

Employment.

Public debt.

Deficits.

Taxes.

Tax evasion.

Household purchasing power.

Investment.

European funding.

Immigration.

Irregular sea arrivals.

Actual returns.

And the increasingly important number of Italians leaving their own country.

The resulting picture is considerably less triumphant than the government’s political longevity might suggest.

1. ITALY HAS STABILITY. WHERE IS THE GROWTH?

Start with the most basic measure of economic performance.

Growth.

Italy’s real GDP expanded by approximately 0.5% in 2025.

The European Commission’s 2026 forecast again points to growth of only around 0.5%, followed by approximately 0.6% in 2027.

These are not recession numbers.

Italy is not collapsing.

But that is precisely the problem with much of the political debate.

The relevant benchmark for a major economy cannot simply be:

“we avoided disaster.”

A country with Italy’s debt, demographic decline, productivity problem and ageing population needs sustained growth substantially above zero.

Instead, Italy remains trapped in what I would call the 0.x% economy.

Growth exists.

But it is so weak that it struggles to transform living standards, debt dynamics or long-term expectations.

And almost four years of political stability have not yet broken that pattern.

2. SPAIN DESTROYS THE “EVERYONE IN EUROPE IS SUFFERING” EXCUSE

External shocks matter.

Italy has faced Covid’s aftermath.

The war in Ukraine.

The energy crisis.

ECB monetary tightening.

Weak German demand.

Middle Eastern instability.

Trade tensions.

Protectionism.

Higher financing costs.

But Italy is not the only European country exposed to these shocks.

Spain faced them too.

And Spain’s economy grew approximately 2.8% in 2025, compared with around 0.5% in Italy.

The European Commission expects Spain to grow by roughly 2.4% in 2026, against approximately 0.5% for Italy.

That comparison is uncomfortable because it weakens the easiest political defence available to any Italian government:

external circumstances.

When two countries experience broadly similar global shocks but produce radically different growth outcomes, domestic economic structure matters.

Productivity matters.

Investment matters.

Labour-market composition matters.

Demography matters.

Business dynamism matters.

Policy matters.

Spain is not perfect.

Its unemployment remains significantly higher than Italy’s.

It has serious housing pressures.

It faces fiscal and political vulnerabilities of its own.

But economically it demonstrates something important:

Europe does not condemn every large southern European economy to 0.x% growth.

Italy’s stagnation cannot be explained away as geography.

3. EMPLOYMENT: MELONI DESERVES CREDIT — BUT THE HEADLINE HIDES THE STRUCTURAL PROBLEM

Employment is one of the strongest parts of the government’s record.

This should be acknowledged clearly.

Italy has reached historically high employment levels.

Unemployment has declined.

The employment rate reached approximately 62.8% in the first quarter of 2026.

That is a genuine achievement.

But international comparison immediately changes the interpretation.

The OECD average was around 72.1%.

Italy therefore remained approximately 9.3 percentage points below the OECD average, despite reaching a domestic record.

This distinction is fundamental.

A record relative to Italy’s historically poor performance is not necessarily a strong result relative to comparable economies.

Italy has created jobs.

Good.

Now ask the more difficult questions.

How productive are those jobs?

How well paid are they?

How many hours do people work?

How much value added do they generate?

How many women participate in the labour market?

How many young people remain economically inactive?

How many skilled Italians are leaving for better opportunities abroad?

Employment quantity matters.

Employment quality matters too.

4. REAL WAGES: THIS IS WHERE THE SUCCESS STORY BECOMES MUCH HARDER TO SELL

Italy’s wage problem is one of the most serious economic weaknesses of the Meloni period.

According to OECD analysis, real wages in early 2025 remained approximately 7.5% below their early-2021 level.

By the first quarter of 2026, the gap had narrowed, but real wages were still approximately 6.1% below Q1 2021.

That remained the largest real-wage gap among the major OECD economies examined.

There has been improvement.

Real wages increased by approximately 1.3% year-on-year in Q1 2026.

But recovering part of an enormous loss is not the same as becoming richer.

This is the distinction between inflation and the price level that political communication often obscures.

Inflation can fall from 8% to 2%.

That does not mean prices fall back to where they started.

It means they rise more slowly from a much higher level.

For households, this distinction is everything.

5. INFLATION HAS FALLEN. THE COST-OF-LIVING SHOCK HAS NOT DISAPPEARED.

The inflation crisis has eased substantially compared with its peak.

That is positive.

But disinflation does not reverse accumulated price increases.

Food.

Energy.

Services.

Rent.

Insurance.

Transport.

Everyday household expenditure.

Many of these costs remain materially higher than before the inflation shock.

If wages fail to catch up, purchasing power remains damaged even after headline inflation normalises.

And this is precisely why real wages matter more than political celebrations of falling inflation.

People do not live inside an annual inflation percentage.

They live inside the cumulative price level.

6. THE DEBT: MORE THAN €3 TRILLION OF REALITY

Now we reach the number that defines Italy’s economic freedom more than almost any political speech.

Public debt.

Italy’s public debt exceeds €3 trillion.

Its debt-to-GDP ratio stood at approximately 137.1% in 2025.

The European Commission expects it to rise to approximately:

138.5% in 2026

and

139.2% in 2027.

This does not mean Meloni created Italy’s debt.

That would be historically absurd.

Italy’s debt problem predates her government by decades.

Nor can the recent trajectory be discussed without acknowledging the delayed fiscal effects of previous measures, including building-renovation tax credits.

But a government that has been in power for almost four years must eventually be judged on the direction of travel.

And the direction is not yet a structural reduction in the debt burden.

7. ITALY, SPAIN, FRANCE AND GERMANY: FOUR VERY DIFFERENT DEBT STORIES

At the end of 2025, debt-to-GDP ratios were approximately:

Italy: 137.1%

France: 115.6%

Spain: 100.7%

Germany: 63.5%

But the direction matters as much as the level.

Italy is projected to move toward roughly 139.2% by 2027.

Spain is expected to move in the opposite direction, toward approximately 98.9%.

France is deteriorating significantly and could reach approximately 120.2%.

Germany’s debt is also expected to rise, toward approximately 68%, as Berlin deliberately expands spending on infrastructure and defence.

The comparison with France is important because it prevents simplistic anti-Meloni arguments.

Italy has recently demonstrated greater fiscal discipline than France.

Its deficit has improved.

Its primary balance has improved.

That deserves recognition.

But Germany exposes a different problem.

Germany can choose to increase borrowing from a starting debt ratio around half Italy’s.

Italy cannot.

Germany possesses fiscal space.

Italy possesses fiscal constraints.

And fiscal space is one of the most concrete forms of national economic sovereignty.

8. THE FIVE YEARS BEFORE MELONI: COVID MAKES SIMPLE COMPARISONS INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST

Anyone comparing Meloni’s debt record mechanically with the previous five years needs to confront Covid.

Before the pandemic, around 2017, debt-to-GDP ratios were approximately:

Italy: 132%

Spain: 98%

France: 96%

Germany: 64%.

Then came the largest peacetime economic shock in modern European history.

Italy’s debt ratio surged above 150% during the pandemic.

It subsequently fell sharply as nominal GDP recovered.

By 2022 it had fallen to around 138%.

By 2023 it was around the mid-130s.

This means two things can be true simultaneously.

Meloni inherited a country with an extraordinary legacy debt problem.

But Italy has still not established a convincing trajectory toward substantially lower debt relative to GDP.

That is the relevant issue.

9. THE SOVEREIGNTY PARADOX: MELONI DISCOVERED THAT MATHEMATICS IS MORE POWERFUL THAN RHETORIC

For years, Italian sovereignist politics built much of its identity around the idea that Brussels constrained national sovereignty.

Meloni herself moderated this position substantially before taking office.

She did not campaign in 2022 on taking Italy out of the European Union or the euro.

She explicitly reassured markets and European partners that Italy would respect its commitments.

That historical precision matters.

But the broader sovereignist rhetoric of national autonomy was unmistakable.

Then came government.

And government confronted arithmetic.

A country with more than €3 trillion of public debt cannot behave as though international bond markets do not exist.

A euro-area member cannot determine its own monetary policy.

A country receiving enormous European Recovery resources cannot simultaneously pretend Brussels is economically irrelevant.

A major manufacturing economy deeply integrated into European supply chains cannot simply detach itself from the Single Market without consequences.

This is not ideology.

It is structure.

10. MELONI DID NOT DEFEAT THE “EXTERNAL CONSTRAINT.” SHE LEARNED TO GOVERN INSIDE IT.

And this, politically, may be one of the greatest contradictions of the Meloni era.

In opposition, Brussels can be the enemy.

In government, Brussels becomes the negotiating table.

In opposition, European fiscal rules can be denounced.

In government, Italy must demonstrate debt sustainability.

In opposition, ECB policy can be attacked.

In government, the cost of refinancing more than €3 trillion of debt makes monetary credibility extremely important.

In opposition, sovereignty is a slogan.

In government, sovereignty is a balance sheet.

Meloni did not break the European constraint.

She learned to govern inside it.

Perhaps she had no rational alternative.

But that is precisely the point.

11. THE ECB DOES NOT “PAY ITALY’S DEBT” — BUT EUROPEAN MONETARY ARCHITECTURE MATTERS ENORMOUSLY

Precision is essential here.

The European Central Bank does not directly finance the Italian government in the simplistic sense sometimes claimed in political debate.

Italy issues debt into financial markets.

Its creditors include domestic and international investors, banks, institutions and households.

But ECB monetary policy fundamentally influences the financial environment in which that debt is refinanced.

Interest rates matter.

Liquidity matters.

Bond-market confidence matters.

Spreads matter.

The credibility of the euro matters.

And the history of ECB asset-purchase programmes matters.

By the end of July 2026, cumulative net holdings of public-sector securities under the ECB’s pandemic emergency purchase programme were approximately:

Germany: €305.6 billion

France: €239.5 billion

Italy: €224.3 billion

Spain: €157.3 billion.

These are not loans handed by Brussels to national governments.

But pretending that euro-area monetary architecture has no relationship with sovereign financing conditions would be equally absurd.

12. THE PNRR MAKES THE CONTRADICTION EVEN MORE OBVIOUS

Italy has been the largest beneficiary of the European Recovery framework.

And European Commission analysis continues to identify Recovery and Resilience Plan investment as an important support for Italian economic activity.

This is one of the most remarkable political contradictions of recent Italian history.

A political culture built partly around criticism of European constraints has governed during a period in which European resources became one of the principal supports for public investment.

The issue is not whether accepting those resources was wrong.

It was rational.

The issue is what happens after them.

The European Recovery and Resilience Facility is temporary.

Italy’s productivity problem is not.

13. WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE EUROPEAN MONEY FADES?

This may be the most important economic question facing Italy.

European Commission projections already indicate that the expiry of the Recovery and Resilience Facility will weigh on investment dynamics.

So what remains?

Roads?

Railways?

Digitalisation?

Energy infrastructure?

More productive public administration?

Higher private investment?

Higher total-factor productivity?

A stronger labour force?

If temporary European money produces permanent productive capacity, the PNRR can become transformative.

If temporary European money produces temporary GDP support without durable productivity gains, Italy will return to the same structural problem with even more urgency.

And European analysis continues to identify weak productivity and high public debt as major Italian vulnerabilities.

14. TAXES: ITALY REMAINS A HIGH-TAX ECONOMY

The Italian state asks a great deal from taxpayers.

This is not exclusively a Meloni phenomenon.

Italy has had a high tax burden under governments of different political colours.

France, depending on the definition and year used, has an even higher overall tax burden.

So claiming that Meloni personally created Italy’s taxation problem would be nonsense.

But after almost four years, neither can the government claim to have fundamentally transformed the relationship between taxation, public expenditure and economic growth.

The structural burden remains.

15. TAX EVASION: ANOTHER AREA WHERE POLITICAL SLOGANS FAIL

Italy continues to have a serious tax-compliance problem.

But here again, the history matters.

The reduction in Italy’s tax gap did not begin with Meloni.

Electronic invoicing.

Digital payments.

Data matching.

The tax registry.

Automated controls.

Previous reforms had already begun changing compliance.

According to Italian Finance Ministry analysis, the non-observed economy represented around 9.5% of GDP in 2021, while the ratio between the tax gap and potential revenue had fallen substantially over the preceding years.

So Meloni cannot legitimately claim to have invented the fight against tax evasion.

But neither should her government be denied credit where results improved.

16. RECORD TAX RECOVERY: A POSITIVE RESULT

In 2025, Italian tax authorities reported record collections from compliance and recovery activities.

Approximately €36.2 billion was recovered overall, with around €29 billion linked to anti-evasion activity.

That is a significant result.

A critical analysis should acknowledge it.

Because criticism becomes stronger, not weaker, when it refuses to ignore inconvenient positive evidence.

The question is whether stronger enforcement can eventually be translated into lower structural burdens for compliant taxpayers.

If not, the political legitimacy of the tax system remains fragile.

17. IMMIGRATION: THE FIVE NUMBERS THAT POLITICS DELIBERATELY CONFUSES

Migration is perhaps the area where statistical categories are abused most aggressively.

At least five numbers must be kept separate:

irregular sea arrivals;

total immigration from abroad;

foreign-citizen immigration;

people detected as illegally present;

return decisions and actual returns.

Mixing them produces propaganda.

Separating them produces policy analysis.

18. SEA ARRIVALS: THE 2023 FAILURE AND THE SUBSEQUENT REVERSAL

In 2022, approximately 105,000 people arrived irregularly by sea.

In 2023, Meloni’s first full year in government, the number surged to approximately 157,651.

For a government elected partly on migration control, this was a clear failure.

Then the trend reversed dramatically.

In 2024, arrivals fell to approximately 66,600.

In 2025, they remained around 66,300.

From 2023 to 2025, that is a reduction of roughly 58%.

This is real.

And pretending otherwise would damage the credibility of any critique of Meloni.

But the next distinction is decisive.

Sea arrivals fell by around 58%. Total immigration did not.

19. TOTAL IMMIGRATION: THE NUMBER THAT CHANGES THE STORY

In 2024, Eurostat recorded approximately:

1,288,600 immigrants in Spain;

1,078,500 in Germany;

451,600 in Italy;

438,600 in France.

Italy therefore did not experience the largest overall immigration flow among Europe’s major economies.

Spain’s was almost three times larger in absolute terms.

And Spain has a smaller population.

This matters enormously.

Italy is highly exposed to the Central Mediterranean route.

But Mediterranean visibility is not the same thing as total migration intensity.

20. 66,600 SEA ARRIVALS VERSUS 382,000 FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS

ISTAT provides an even clearer comparison.

Approximately 382,000 foreign citizens immigrated into Italy in 2024.

Sea arrivals were roughly 66,600.

Those two numbers alone should end the habit of treating “landings” and “immigration” as interchangeable concepts.

They are not.

A person arriving legally for work has nothing statistically to do with a person arriving irregularly by boat.

A government can therefore reduce irregular sea arrivals dramatically while total legal and overall immigration remains substantial.

That is approximately what happened.

21. IRREGULAR PRESENCE: ITALY IS NOT NUMBER ONE HERE EITHER

In 2024, non-EU citizens detected as illegally present numbered approximately:

249,000 in Germany;

142,000 in France;

109,000 in Italy.

But these numbers must not be described as the total number of undocumented migrants living in each country.

They measure detections.

That distinction is essential.

22. RETURN ORDERS ARE NOT ACTUAL RETURNS

Across the European Union in 2024, approximately 453,000 non-EU citizens received orders to leave.

Only around 110,000 were actually returned to third countries.

That crude relationship is approximately one completed return for every four return decisions.

It is not a strict same-cohort deportation rate.

But it reveals the operational gap.

In 2025, actual returns to third countries increased to approximately 135,460, around 21% higher than in 2024.

Germany recorded approximately 29,295 returns in 2025.

France approximately 14,940.

The message is straightforward.

Signing a deportation order is easy compared with executing one.

23. MELONI REDUCED SEA ARRIVALS. SHE DID NOT “SOLVE IMMIGRATION.”

This is the formulation that the evidence supports.

Meloni’s government failed badly on sea arrivals in 2023.

It then achieved a major reduction in 2024 and maintained that lower level in 2025.

Credit where credit is due.

But total immigration remained substantial.

And Europe’s structural weakness in executing returns remains unresolved.

So the claim that Meloni “stopped immigration” is false.

The claim that “nothing changed” is also false.

Reality is less convenient than either slogan.

24. THE OTHER MIGRATION CRISIS: ITALIANS ARE LEAVING

Now consider the number discussed far less frequently in Italian politics.

In 2024 approximately 191,000 people emigrated from Italy.

Around 156,000 were Italian citizens.

The number of Italian citizens leaving increased by approximately 36.5% compared with the previous year.

Their average age was around 32.8 years.

ISTAT has warned that part of the increase reflects stronger compliance with registration requirements for Italians abroad.

That caveat is important.

But the underlying phenomenon remains.

Italy continues to export young people.

And many are precisely the people a stagnant, ageing, high-debt economy can least afford to lose.

25. THE REAL MIGRATION QUESTION IS NOT ONLY WHO ENTERS ITALY. IT IS WHO LEAVES.

In 2024 approximately 382,000 foreign citizens immigrated into Italy.

Approximately 156,000 Italian citizens emigrated.

Only around 53,000 Italians returned from abroad.

This is a much deeper demographic story than boats arriving in Lampedusa.

Italy is importing labour while exporting part of its youth.

It needs migrants because its population is ageing and its workforce is shrinking.

Yet it struggles to retain its own citizens.

A serious government should therefore be judged not only on how many irregular migrants it prevents from arriving.

It should also be judged on how many young Italians believe their future is somewhere else.

26. POLITICAL STABILITY WAS MELONI’S GREAT OPPORTUNITY

Italy has spent decades complaining that governments do not last long enough to implement structural reform.

Meloni removed that excuse.

She has enjoyed political stability unusual by Italian standards.

That stability should have been an extraordinary economic asset.

Long-term reforms become easier when governments survive.

Investors gain predictability.

Administrations can implement multi-year programmes.

Political capital can be spent on unpopular structural reforms.

That is why the standard for judging Meloni should be higher, not lower.

She had something many Italian prime ministers never possessed:

time.

27. WHAT HAS ITALY DONE WITH THAT TIME?

There are positive answers.

Employment improved.

Unemployment declined.

Fiscal accounts improved.

A primary surplus returned.

Tax recovery strengthened.

Sea arrivals fell sharply after 2023.

Markets did not revolt.

Italy remained politically stable.

But then come the structural questions.

Where is the productivity breakthrough?

Where is the sustained acceleration in GDP?

Where is the decisive recovery in real wages?

Where is the durable decline in debt-to-GDP?

Where is the reversal in youth emigration?

Where is the transformation of Italy into a materially more attractive destination for productive capital and skilled labour?

Those questions are much harder to answer.

28. THE MOST DAMAGING NUMBER MAY STILL BE 0.5%

A government can explain many things.

It can explain inherited debt.

It can explain Covid.

It can explain Ukraine.

It can explain energy prices.

It can explain ECB rates.

It can explain Trump tariffs.

It can explain Middle Eastern instability.

It can explain Germany’s industrial weakness.

But eventually the explanations encounter one number.

0.5%.

Approximately Italy’s 2025 growth.

Approximately the European Commission’s forecast for 2026.

When Spain is growing several times faster under many of the same external shocks, “the world is difficult” stops being a complete explanation.

29. THIS IS NOT ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Italy is not Argentina.

It is not Greece during the sovereign-debt crisis.

It is not experiencing hyperinflation.

Its banking system is not collapsing.

Its bond market is functioning.

Employment is strong by Italian historical standards.

Its private wealth remains substantial.

Its manufacturing base remains important.

Its current-account position is not catastrophic.

Any analysis portraying contemporary Italy as an economic disaster would therefore be unserious.

But avoiding disaster is not the same as achieving transformation.

That distinction is the core of my judgement.

30. THIS IS ALSO NOT AN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE

The opposite propaganda is equally unconvincing.

An economy growing around half a percentage point is not experiencing a renaissance.

A country whose real wages remain materially below their 2021 level is not experiencing a broad prosperity boom.

A country approaching 140% debt-to-GDP has not solved its public-finance problem.

A country losing large numbers of young citizens has not solved its demographic problem.

A country relying heavily on temporary European investment has not yet demonstrated that it can sustain the same investment momentum after those funds fade.

The numbers simply do not support triumphalism.

31. MELONI’S GREATEST SUCCESS MAY ALSO EXPOSE HER GREATEST FAILURE

Her greatest success is stability.

And that makes the absence of transformation more difficult to explain.

A government surviving only eighteen months can reasonably claim it lacked time.

A government approaching four years cannot use the same defence.

The longer Meloni remains in office, the more the benchmark changes.

Longevity itself stops being the achievement.

Results become the achievement.

32. MY JUDGEMENT

This is where I separate evidence from opinion.

The evidence contains both successes and failures.

My interpretation of that evidence is more critical.

I do not believe Meloni has destroyed Italy.

I do not believe every decision of her government has failed.

I do not believe her economic management has been reckless.

In some respects, it has been considerably more pragmatic than her previous political rhetoric suggested.

And that pragmatism deserves recognition.

But I also do not believe almost four years of exceptional political stability have produced a sufficiently ambitious economic transformation.

Italy remains too slow.

Too indebted.

Too unproductive.

Too dependent on temporary external investment support.

Too weak in real-wage growth.

Too willing to lose young people.

And too comfortable describing the avoidance of crisis as success.

33. THE POLITICAL CONTRADICTION OF THE MELONI ERA

The irony is difficult to ignore.

A sovereignist political movement reached power.

And once in power it discovered that Italy’s economic sovereignty was constrained not primarily by Brussels bureaucrats, but by debt, productivity, demographics, markets and arithmetic.

The government did not leave Europe.

It moved closer to European institutional pragmatism.

It did not reject Recovery funding.

It depended on its implementation.

It did not ignore financial markets.

It reassured them.

It did not launch a fiscal revolution.

It pursued relative caution.

Politically, that may have been mature.

But intellectually, it requires acknowledging that reality defeated much of the older rhetoric.

34. WHAT WOULD REAL SOVEREIGNTY LOOK LIKE?

Not shouting at Brussels.

Not attacking the ECB.

Not waving flags.

Not promising impossible mass deportations.

Not describing every external constraint as an attack on national independence.

Real economic sovereignty would mean:

a debt ratio moving sustainably downward;

productivity moving sustainably upward;

real wages rising;

a larger labour force;

more women employed;

more young Italians staying;

more skilled foreigners choosing Italy;

more private investment;

more innovation;

more competitive companies;

a state capable of collecting taxes efficiently;

a state capable of executing lawful return decisions;

and an economy capable of growing after European Recovery money disappears.

That is sovereignty measured in economic capacity rather than political vocabulary.

35. THE VERDICT: STABILITY WITHOUT TRANSFORMATION

Giorgia Meloni deserves political credit for building one of the most stable governments in the history of the Italian Republic.

Her government deserves economic credit for stronger employment, improving fiscal balances, record tax recovery and the dramatic post-2023 decline in irregular sea arrivals.

But none of those facts erase the central weaknesses.

Italy still grows too slowly.

Real wages remain damaged.

Public debt remains enormous and is projected to rise relative to GDP.

Productivity remains weak.

The employment rate remains structurally low by international standards.

Young Italians continue to leave.

The country remains deeply embedded in — and dependent upon — European monetary, financial and investment architecture.

And immigration policy remains much more complicated than the fall in Mediterranean landings suggests.

So my verdict is neither catastrophe nor renaissance.

It is something more uncomfortable.

Stability without transformation.

Meloni has proved that she can govern Italy for a long time.

She has not yet proved that governing Italy for a long time can fundamentally change Italy.

And after almost four years, that distinction can no longer be postponed.

Because Italy’s problem was never simply that its governments did not last.

The problem was what they accomplished while they lasted.

And the ultimate economic question for the Meloni era is therefore brutally simple:

If almost four years of political stability, a parliamentary majority and an unprecedented wave of European investment are still not enough to move Italy decisively beyond the 0.x% economy, what exactly will be?

That is not left-wing mathematics.

It is not right-wing mathematics.

It is not Brussels mathematics.

It is simply mathematics.

And mathematics does not vote.

Roberto Balbino — CEO, Fintech SCB
Independent analyst of finance, economics, geopolitics and global markets.