MELONI, THE SUBJECT: THE LONGEST-SERVING GOVERNMENT OF THE ITALIAN REPUBLIC. THE OBJECT:
STAGNATION, DEBT, FALLING REAL WAGES, YOUTH EXODUS — AND THE FAILURE OF THE SOVEREIGNIST PROMISE.
A government can survive.
A government can remain popular.
A government can dominate parliament.
A government can communicate effectively.
A government can reassure financial markets.
And yet none of those things, by themselves, prove that it has transformed the economy it governs.
This distinction matters now more than ever.
Meloni has achieved something genuinely unusual in the notoriously unstable history of the Italian Republic: political continuity.
But continuity is an input.
It is not an economic output.
The relevant question is therefore no longer whether Giorgia Meloni has succeeded politically in remaining in office.
She clearly has.
The question is what Italy has received economically in exchange for almost four years of unusually stable government.
To answer that, ideology is almost useless.
We need GDP.
Real wages.
Productivity.
Employment.
Public debt.
Deficits.
Taxes.
Tax evasion.
Household purchasing power.
Investment.
European funding.
Immigration.
Irregular sea arrivals.
Actual returns.
And the increasingly important number of Italians leaving their own country.
The resulting picture is considerably less triumphant than the government’s political longevity might suggest.
1. ITALY HAS STABILITY. WHERE IS THE GROWTH?
Start with the most basic measure of economic performance.
Growth.
Italy’s real GDP expanded by approximately 0.5% in 2025.
The European Commission’s 2026 forecast again points to growth of only around 0.5%, followed by approximately 0.6% in 2027.
These are not recession numbers.
Italy is not collapsing.
But that is precisely the problem with much of the political debate.
The relevant benchmark for a major economy cannot simply be:
“we avoided disaster.”