Premier Giorgia Meloni on Wednesday said she was “very proud and satisfied” of the 2025 budget bill saying it was “serious and common sense”.
She also thanked her deputy premiers, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, as well as Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, speaking on the sidelines of a European Union summit with Gulf States.
“The strategy remains the same”, Meloni also said.
“We focus on employment, income, salaries, the health of citizens, without increasing taxes and keeping finances in order”, she noted.
The premier went on to say “there were never as many resources on healthcare” with healthcare funding set to “reach 136.5 billion in 2025 and 140 billion in 2026”.
“We wanted to succeed in having resources that could be redistributed to low-income families, but we didn’t want to signal that banks are adversaries, for this reason there was cooperation”, the premier also said, replying to a question on measures introduced in the budget bill regarding banks an
d insurance companies.
The government’s draft budgetary plan (DBP) arrived at the European Commission on Wednesday after the cabinet approved its 2025 budget bill with 30 billion euros worth of new measures late on Tuesday.
Banks, which have enjoyed high profits in recent years thanks to the ECB putting up interest rates, and insurance companies will be called on to make a 3.5-billion-euro contribution to the budget, which will to go the national health system.
The package also includes a 1,000-euro bonus for the parents of newborns and maintains cuts in the labour-tax wedge for lower earners that the government made in its 2023 budget law.
The DBP maintains the Quota 103 scheme that enables people to start claiming a State pension before the retirement age of 67, under certain conditions, if their age and number of years of social-security contributions add up to 103.
It also includes incentives for people who have reached retirement age to stay in work.
Around 2.3-2.4 billion euros of the financial co
verage for the budget comes from a review of public spending, with ministries told to cut their budgets by around 5%.
Source: Ansa News Agency