# Italy's Finance Minister Wants the EU to Let Inflation Count as an Excuse for Missing Budget Targets > Giancarlo Giorgetti will ask eurozone finance ministers this week to factor inflation into how Brussels judges budget deviations, after Italian inflation jumped to 4,1 percent in September from a target the government had set at 1,8 percent. He says he is not questioning the rules, just asking for them to catch up with reality. - Source: Italian Insider - Canonical URL: https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-giorgetti-eu-inflation-budget-rules - Author: Giulia Bassani - Section: Business - Other edition: https://italianinsider.net/article/italy-giorgetti-eu-inflation-budget-rules - Published: 2026-10-07T13:30:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-07T13:30:00.000Z - Tags: Giancarlo Giorgetti, European Union, Inflation, Budget deficit --- Italy's economy minister Giancarlo Giorgetti wants the European Union to treat inflation as a legitimate excuse when a government's budget drifts off course, and he plans to raise the idea directly with his eurozone counterparts at this week's finance ministers meeting. The argument rests on a specific gap, Italy built its current spending plans around an assumption of 1,8 percent annual inflation, a number the real economy has already blown past. Italian inflation jumped to 4,1 percent in September, up from 3,2 percent the month before, and Giorgetti has pointed to the burden of energy costs as a drag that could cut as much as 0,2 percent of GDP off next year's growth on its own. Rather than challenge Brussels' fiscal framework outright, he has framed the request narrowly, we are not questioning the budget rules, he said, but we are asking that the rules be adapted to today's reality. Under the EU's existing framework, the Commission is already supposed to weigh severe external shocks when deciding whether to open or escalate an infringement procedure against a member state missing its targets, and Giorgetti's push amounts to asking that inflation itself be read as exactly that kind of shock. The timing matters because Italy is close to something it has wanted for years, an exit from the EU's excessive deficit procedure. Rome still plans to bring its deficit below the EU's 3 percent of GDP ceiling this year, down from 3,1 percent in 2025, in line with the 2,9 percent target it set in April, with an eye on leaving the procedure entirely in 2027. An inflation driven miss now, after years of consolidation aimed at exactly this outcome, would be a frustrating way to fall short. Whether other eurozone finance ministers accept the argument is a separate question from whether it is true. Inflation genuinely does distort budget planning, a government that assumes 1,8 percent and gets 4,1 percent is working with numbers that no longer describe its own economy. But every government with a deficit problem has an incentive to find a shock that excuses it, and Giorgetti is effectively asking his peers to agree that this particular shock, arriving at this particular moment for Italy, deserves exactly that kind of exception. --- Originally published by Italian Insider. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-giorgetti-eu-inflation-budget-rules.