The article reviews Italy’s fiscal policy over 2019-2020. Notwithstanding the fact that two different coalitions have been responsible for the budget law over the period and conducted two alternative fiscal strategies, they have both failed to tackle the public-debt problem. They have done so not only in practice with debt to GDP figures showing no significant progress, but also in the political narrative paying little attention to the need to reduce the debt burden weighing on future generations. Looking ahead, the repeated breach of EU debt rules poses a challenge that is both domestic and international, unless EU rules are significantly reformed.
