{"id":427070,"date":"2025-05-19T11:12:04","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T09:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/05\/19\/italia-ue-taglia-crescita-2025-e-2026\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T12:35:53","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T10:35:53","slug":"eu-cuts-italys-2025-2026-growth-forecasts-citing-falling-productivity-and-tariffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/05\/19\/eu-cuts-italys-2025-2026-growth-forecasts-citing-falling-productivity-and-tariffs\/","title":{"rendered":"EU cuts Italy&#8217;s 2025, 2026 growth forecasts citing falling productivity and tariffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Brussels &#8211; Italy returns\u00a0to square one: Blame trade tensions, global uncertainties, measures, and structural problems; growth will be lower than expected. Not for 2024, which the European Commission, in its spring economic forecast, leaves unchanged from its November forecast (0.7 percent). <strong>For 2025 and 2026, Brussels cuts 0.3 percentage points of growth, with the increase in Italian\u00a0Gross Domestic Product now expected at 0.7 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Italy has an ongoing problem because\u00a0&#8220;among the largest EU member states, in 2024, there were further <strong>declines in labor productivity in Germany and Italy,<\/strong>&#8221; the EU Commission noted. This explains Italy&#8217;s difficulties, but it risks paying for the aggressive policies of US President Donald Trump. Italy is on the list of countries &#8220;strongly exposed&#8221; to the trade measures threatened and decreed by the White House. So, while domestic demand is expected to accelerate in 2025,<span lang=\"en-EN\">, &#8220;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/27\/trump-announces-the-start-of-the-tariff-war-with-the-eu-they-wont-screw-us-anymore-brussels-we-will-react-firmly\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">US trade tariffs<\/a> will affect the exports of goods<\/strong>.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Even if the work of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni &#8212; who also traveled to Washington to try to defuse the crisis &#8212;\u00a0may\u00a0have yielded some\u00a0results, to date, there are no signs of this in Brussels, where\u00a0Italy is viewed with the doubts that the situation warrants. Data in hand, in 2026, the country is projected to rank\u00a0last in the entire EU in terms of growth rate (0.9 percent, along with Belgium).<\/p>\n<h4 id='government-accounts-debt-increases'  id=\"boomdevs_1\">Government accounts, debt increases<\/h4>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\">In addition to anemic growth,\u00a0Italy&#8217;s debt\/GDP ratio is also on an upward trajectory, in open violation of European commitments and rules. <strong>According to the projections, 134.6 percent in 2023, 135.3 percent in 2024, 136.7 percent in 2025 and 138.2 percent in 2025<\/strong>. A problem for a country already under scrutiny for the trend of its accounts. The\u00a0situation\u00a0deteriorated due to\u00a0the Superbonus scheme that the\u00a0second Conte\u00a0government passed. According to the EU executive, in 2024, debt grew\u00a0&#8220;<span class=\"HwtZe\" lang=\"en\"><span class=\"jCAhz ChMk0b\"><span class=\"ryNqvb\">mainly due to a debt-increasing stock-flow adjustment related to the lagged impact on cash borrowing of the tax credits for housing renovations.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<h4 id='deficit-declines-but-still-high'  id=\"boomdevs_2\"><span lang=\"en-IT\">Deficit declines, but still high<\/span><\/h4>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\">On the other hand, Italy can boast downward deficit projections, another element carefully considered when assessing the health of the national public accounts. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2024\/02\/10\/agreement-on-stability-pact-national-plans-by-september\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">renewed stability pact<\/a> provides even stricter rules and easier fines for those who do not reduce it within the 3 percent of\u00a0GDP threshold and do not commit to moving away from it. I<strong>taly will exceed this limit<\/strong><span lang=\"en-EN\"><strong>\u00a0in 2024 (3.4 percent) and 2025 (3.3 percent)<\/strong> but will return to meeting common budget rules in 2026 (2.9 percent).<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\"><span lang=\"en-EN\">The correction effort may avoid, for now, the initiation of an\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.consilium.europa.eu\/en\/policies\/excessive-deficit-procedure\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">excessive deficit procedure<\/a>, even though\u00a0the EU executive will return to this in early June, when it adopts the European Semester package, the set of reports on compliance with the rules envisaged in the common rules coordination process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 0px;\">\u00a0From the Economy Commissioner, <strong>Valdis Dombrovskis<\/strong> comes a new call for reform: &#8220;<span class=\"HwtZe\" lang=\"en\"><span class=\"jCAhz ChMk0b\"><span class=\"ryNqvb\">The risks to the outlook remain tilted to the downside, so the EU must take decisive action to boost our competitiveness.&#8221;<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spring economic forecast sees repercussions for Italy&#8217;s growth. Debt increases, deficit declines slightly<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":289509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25705],"tags":[25881,30670,26888,25741,25742,26179,25740,25885,25979],"class_list":["post-427070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-debt-en","tag-deficit-en-2","tag-pnrr-en","tag-accounts-public-en","tag-riforme-en","tag-valdis-dombrovskis-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427070"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":427105,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427070\/revisions\/427105"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}