Italy’s quiet stability and confidence puts it steps ahead of chaotic France
2025 has been a good year for progress in Italy but it must keep its momentum if it wants to cements itself as more than a European middle power.
Set the gastronomic rivalry aside and let’s ask a big question: is Italy really the new France? Comparisons between the two cultural big hitters have become unavoidable this year. Both know how to live and eat well and attract vast numbers of tourists. That said, France has foundered economically and politically, while Italy – the home of fiscal blunders and political gaffes – has looked surprisingly stable in comparison.
If proof were needed of the two countries’ fortunes moving in different directions, it came in September when global ratings company Fitch upgraded Italy to BBB+ status, while downgrading France from AA- rating to an A+ (Moody’s gave the country a could-do-better negative outlook in October). The humiliating Louvre robbery a month later seemed like a kick in the crown jewels. That’s before we mull over the jailing of former president Nicolas Sarkozy.
So is Italy really the new France? Not quite. Financial institutions love extreme prudence and that’s precisely what Italy has been pedalling under its far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni. Spending has been reined in but little has been done to stimulate growth or investment. Public debt is still higher in Italy (135 per cent of nominal GDP) than in France (113 per cent) but the latter is catching up. While Meloni’s retrograde social policies have managed to avoid too much global scrutiny, you have to take your hat off to her for keeping together a ruling coalition in a country that doesn’t normally do political compromise.
Beyond politics, Italy has been either cheeky or canny – depending on how you look at it – in stimulating its economy by tempting the wealthy to transfer their fiscal residency here. France’s then prime minister, François Bayrou, even accused it of “fiscal dumping”, in a reference to an Italian flat tax on foreign income and other favourable conditions that have caused an exodus from France, the UK and elsewhere.
Italy has problems that aren’t going away, though, from an ageing population and a Eurozone debt mountain to stagnating wages. But it’s having a good old gloat about arguably being the most stable western European power. Meloni has championed herself as a bridge between Europe and the US, and even Africa. The longer she keeps the government together, the more plausible this will start to sound.
Ed Stocker is Monocle’s Milan-based Europe editor at large.
