Italian Economy Minister Giorgetti says they will be asking the EU to increase energy spending by 0.6% and defence spending by 0.9% of GDP, Corriere reports

Italian Economy Minister Giorgetti says they will be asking the EU to increase energy spending by 0.6% and defence spending by 0.9% of GDP, Corriere reports.

Requests of this kind fit the running pattern of euro-area governments seeking flexibility under the bloc's fiscal framework for defence and energy outlays, an argument that has been live since the rules were reinstated and one in which Brussels has historically granted partial carve-outs rather than blanket exemptions. The transmission channel for BTPs is the spread to Bunds: any signal that additional spending will be accommodated outside the standard deficit trajectory tends to be read as looser Italian issuance ahead, while a carve-out framed as temporary and exempt can be digested more easily. Rome's form here matters, as Italian governments have a long record of negotiating headroom with the Commission and then testing the limits of what was agreed. The distinction worth drawing is between spending exempted from the fiscal rules and spending simply added to the deficit, since only the former is neutral for the debt path. What follows is the Commission's response, whether other member states co-sponsor the request, and how it interacts with Italy's existing excessive-deficit position. Until the EU's answer is known, the headline is an opening bid rather than a policy fact.