On 2026-10-15 Premier Giorgia Meloni’s government sent the Draft Budgetary Plan to the European Commission and the Italian parliament. The document is the government’s formal outline of the 2027 budget law. For a newcomer, the DPB is the moment Italy tells Brussels and its own lawmakers how it plans to spend and raise money in the coming year, and it sets the frame for the political debate that follows.
The law will include approximately €23.5 billion in new measures to support households and businesses. That figure is the headline size of the intervention the government is presenting for 2027. In budget language, new measures mean additional spending or tax relief aimed at people and firms, and the government is framing the package as support rather than a structural overhaul.
The financial sector will contribute €5 billion for 2027.
Here the government is invoking that flexibility specifically for defense and energy security, placing those outlays outside the usual deficit constraints.
Coverage is not only coming from finance. The budget will also include cuts to ministries and levies in the gambling industry. Ministry cuts mean reducing the resources allocated to government departments, a classic way to free up room for new spending without raising headline taxes.
The government will use the national escape clause to finance increased spending on defense and energy security. In general terms, a national escape clause allows a country to run an extra deficit to finance exceptional spending. Here the government is invoking that flexibility specifically for defense and energy security, placing those outlays outside the usual deficit constraints. The move links the budget to security priorities and explains part of the overall fiscal loosening.
With the new measures and the escape-clause spending, the projected budget deficit for 2027 is 3.4% of GDP. The deficit is the gap between what the state spends and what it raises. Expressing it as a share of GDP allows comparison over time and across countries. A 3.4% deficit signals a looser fiscal stance for 2027, consistent with the government’s choice to fund support measures and security spending while relying on a mix of sector contributions, ministry cuts and gambling levies for partial coverage.