Italy’s main employers’ federation, Confindustria, used its annual assembly to challenge both government and opposition to act together on tax burden and public spending reform. They want to put business back at the centre of economic policy and recommend a €20billion reallocation.
Confindustria President Emanuele Orsini put a concrete fiscal proposal on the table at the industry association’s annual assembly on Tuesday, calling on the government and trade unions to jointly identify €20billion of existing public expenditure for reallocation. The move would not add a single euro to Italy’s already substantial national debt.
“We are putting forward a proposal to the government and to the social partners,” Orsini said. “Let’s work together on these measures, some of which have lost their raison d’être or overlap with one another. Let’s analyse them together. And let’s identify the 20 billion to be reallocated, without increasing the debt: one-third to growth, one-third to healthcare, one-third to education.”
Orsini described the proposal as “a concrete act of responsibility on tax policy, to be carried out through shared decisions by the ruling majority and the opposition”. It was an unusually explicit call for cross-party consensus on economic reform. “Changing this state of affairs requires trust and political courage,” he added.
The Confindustria president set the proposal in the context of Italy’s international competitiveness. He pointed out that the country ranks fourth among advanced nations for the weight of its overall tax burden. “For robust growth, we must act united and empower entrepreneurs to do their job. Enabling them to grow means strengthening the country.”
Five levers for business
Beyond the reallocation proposal, Orsini identified five policy levers he argued were necessary to “put business back at the centre.” These cover energy prices, the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises, development and innovation contracts, administrative simplification, and reform of Law 231, the legislative framework governing corporate administrative liability.
The annual Confindustria assembly is one of Italy’s most closely watched political-economic events. This year’s gathering heard both Orsini’s intervention and a keynote address by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The PM used the occasion to renew her attack on EU regulatory overreach and announce a joint project with Confindustria to reform Italy’s domestic bureaucracy.
The two speeches, taken together, sketched a shared agenda between government and industry on deregulation and competitiveness. However, the political viability of Orsini’s cross-party fiscal proposal, would require cooperation between the governing coalition and opposition parties.
