Tax cuts, debt reined in as Italy adopts 2025 budget

Rome: Italy s parliament on Saturday approved the 2025 budget, aiming to both appease EU demands to lower the eurozone nation s deficit and honour Pri...

Rome: Italy's parliament on Saturday approved the 2025 budget, aiming to both appease EU demands to lower the eurozone nation's deficit and honour Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's pledge to cut taxes.

Over half of the package, worth some 30 billion euros ($31 billion), is devoted to cuts to tax and social security contributions for low- and middle-income earners.

Rome is having to perform a fine fiscal balancing act, after Brussels took Italy to task earlier this year over its debt worth nearly 3 trillion euros, the second highest as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) in the European Union.

Meloni's hard-right coalition has committed to reducing the public deficit to 3.3 percent of GDP in 2025, down from an expected 3.8 percent this year.

But the budget comes amid slowing growth, with the ISTAT national statistics office estimating GDP this year to increase just 0.5 percent -- half what it forecast in June.