Osservazioni a prima lettura sulla Nota di aggiornamento al Documento di Economia e Finanza 2019

The paper analyzes one of the most important passages of the annual cycle of policy coordination, in particular the document that starts the national budget semester (Nota di aggiornamento al Documento di economia e finanza 2019, NADEF). At first, the recent history of Italian public accounts is traced through the point of view of Euro-national budget procedures: in particular, the reconstructed path is the one that starts from NADEF 2018, passes from the dialogue between government and European institutions until the approval of the budget law for 2019 and finally reaches order n. 17 of 2019 of the Italian Constitutional Court. Secondly, a series of reflections are made on the qualitative and quantitative contents of the NADEF, in particular with regard to the phenomenon of the stiffening of the State budget. The Draft Budgetary Plan and the failure to comply with the debt rule are then taken into consideration. Finally, the contribution closes with some considerations on the return to a ‘political’ Minister of the economy.