Giorgetti writes in good Italian what Salvini promised Putin
The League has only one political vocation: that of executing, more or less directly, the mandate that Vladimir Putin has given to the pro-Russian forces in Europe, to oppose European rearmament and thus politically and technically obstruct the Union’s increased military investments. A single vocation, with two masks: on the one hand, that of Matteo Salvini and Roberto Vannacci, direct and provocative in denouncing ‘European rearmament’ as madness; on the other, Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, who dresses the same message in institutional, urban tones, clad in numbers and accounting prudence.
“The increase in defence spending will have to be gradual, in order to ensure consistency with the development of national supply and not displace other spending components with a significant impact on the country’s potential growth and the welfare of its citizens,” he says. This is what the Minister of the Economy writes in the introductory report to the Public Finance Planning Document. On the need to increase defence capability at the European level, Giorgetti adds: ‘Italy, while having already expressed its interest in resorting to the European financial instrument Safe, considers it necessary to carry out further investigations on the broader issue of defence capabilities and financial compatibility before deciding whether to make use of the national safeguard clause. This is also in order not to jeopardise fiscal consolidation‘.
What leaps and bounds poor Giancarlo has to make in order not to contradict his party leader, without going head-on against the sacrosanct commitments made by the Prime Minister in NATO and the EU! At bottom, however, the meaning does not change: depowering defence Europe and satisfying the Kremlin’s agenda.
The result is a ‘party economy’ – Leganomics – which on pensions or taxation is not afraid to break the state accounts, but which on defence – which is an existential investment for Italian and European freedom – exhibits a maniacal and austere rigour.
Salvini and Vannacci – for their part – do not mince words. The League leader said it loud and clear: ‘I am absolutely against any kind of European rearmament… If it’s a question of investing money for internal security and hiring carabinieri, yes. If it’s a question of going into debt in Sulmona to go and buy tanks in Berlin, no‘. As if the Italian defence industry was unable to sustain and absorb investment. And again: ‘No to rearmament, absurd to go into debt. Europe does not follow bellicose tones‘. Meta-leader Vannacci, for his part, reiterated: ‘There is no imminent threat, the emergency is the criminal acts of irregular immigrants’, adding in a rally that ‘it is useless to spend 800 billion if no one goes to the front. Who are we sending, the Gay Pride people?“.
The ‘reductio ad negrum atque frocium‘ comes in handy for every occasion.
Not too coincidentally, just yesterday, 2 October 2025, Vladimir Putin declared in his speech to the Valdai that Russia will respond ‘convincingly‘ to the increasing militarisation of Europe. In another passage, he said: ‘Calm down and finally think about your problems‘, in short exactly the rhetorical pattern that Salvini and Vannacci follow as good schoolchildren.
Giorgetti states that ‘no corrective manoeuvre is needed, because the accounts are going as planned‘ (with the complicity of the fiscal drag, but we will talk about this in other articles), while acknowledging that the ‘escalation of the war’ introduces new variables in the public accounts. But that ‘no corrective manoeuvre‘ is an implicit constraint: in his view, no expenditure can be made that breaks the consolidation. Excluding pensions, of course, where consolidation can leave room for intergenerational plunder.
Ultimately, the League is applying the agenda that Putin whispered to pro-Russian forces in Europe: obstruct European military build-up, focus on cost-benefit analysis, delegitimise the very idea of an armed Europe. Salvini does it in broad daylight, Vannacci turns it into provocative slogans, Giorgetti with the dry pen of the technician. The operation is refined.
