Rome caps the 2028 defence rise at 0.3 percent of GDP, about €7 billion under the old plan

Italy has cut the planned 2028 rise in defence spending to 0.3 percent of GDP, about €7 billion below the increase that had been pencilled in. The figure sits in the public-finance policy document the cabinet approved as the frame for the budget. Economy minister Giancarlo Giorgetti called the budget serious. Defence minister Guido Crosetto said he had taken note.

The document asks the European Commission for flexibility of €14 billion in 2027 and €14 billion in 2028. Each year the request is split in half: 0.3 percent of GDP for defence and 0.3 percent for energy. On 10 September the government had already asked Brussels to activate the national escape clause for higher energy and security spending. The new text is the size of that ask, not the first mention of it.

Crosetto's comment, reported by Il Sole 24 Ore after the cabinet meeting at Palazzo Chigi, is the part that fixes the defence number. He said the 0.3 percent for 2027, already budgeted at that level, should stay and should go to the priorities the defence ministry has named. For 2028, he said, a further 0.3 has been planned for now, in place of an initial 0.6. He tied the smaller step to inflation and to the strain on sovereign bonds, and he said he hoped 2027's conditions would allow a later increase.

A 0.3-point gap on Italian GDP is the €7 billion Il Sole used. That is the sum that drops out of procurement plans if the 2028 step stays at the lower rate. The paper said specific projects are at risk and that the list is not settled. Crosetto did give one force-structure number that is settled on current money. The cyber arm of the armed forces, he said, can reach at most 1,200 people by the end of 2026, inside a total force target of 160,000. That ceiling is a staff cap, not a spending line, and it tells suppliers that a larger cyber command is not funded in this document.

The political read is a collision between a NATO spending argument and a domestic budget. Rome has spent two years telling allies it would climb toward higher defence outlays. The escape clause was the device that let the extra spending sit outside the usual EU deficit math. Halving the 2028 defence slice, while keeping a matching energy slice, is a choice about which pressure to pay first. Giorgetti's "serious" budget is the finance ministry's word for that choice. Crosetto's "I have taken note" is the defence ministry's.

Nothing in the document publishes a contract cancellation. The risk to projects is prospective: a plan that assumed 0.6 percent in 2028 now has to fit inside 0.3 unless a later cabinet restores the difference. The cyber cap is the only headcount Crosetto attached to the present resources. Other services will learn their share when the budget bill, not the policy frame, is tabled.

The numbers to hold are the two requests of €14 billion, the split of 0.3 and 0.3, the drop from 0.6 to 0.3 in 2028, the €7 billion gap, and a cyber arm held at 1,200 inside a force of 160,000. Brussels still has to answer the escape-clause request filed on 10 September. The Italian cut does not wait on that answer. It is already in the cabinet's frame.