# Italy's Credit Rating Keeps Leaning Toward an Upgrade, and Agencies Seem to Be Waiting on the 2027 Election > Scope Ratings affirmed Italy at BBB+ and kept its Positive outlook rather than upgrading outright, citing a falling deficit and years of government stability under Meloni. It is the latest in a run of agency reviews that keep pointing the same direction without quite pulling the trigger. - Source: Italian Insider - Canonical URL: https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-s-credit-rating-keeps-leaning-toward-an-upgrade-and-agencies-seem-to-be-waiting-on-the-2027-election - Author: Italian Insider Staff - Section: Business - Other edition: https://italianinsider.net/article/italy-s-credit-rating-keeps-leaning-toward-an-upgrade-and-agencies-seem-to-be-waiting-on-the-2027-election - Published: 2026-10-24T00:50:29.566Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T00:50:29.566Z - Tags: Giorgia Meloni, Credit rating, Scope Ratings, Italian economy --- Scope Ratings completed its latest review of Italy's sovereign credit and left the headline rating where it already stood, BBB+, while keeping the outlook at Positive rather than moving it up a notch. The decision reads less like hesitation than like an agency that has already made up its mind about the direction of travel and is simply timing when to act on it. The case Scope laid out for that Positive lean rests on numbers that have been moving the right way for a while. Italy's headline fiscal deficit fell to 3.0 percent of GDP in 2025, and the country is on track to exit the European Union's excessive deficit procedure in 2026, the formal process Brussels uses to monitor and pressure member states running deficits above the bloc's threshold. Scope also pointed to a stronger labour market, a sound banking system and a favourable net external position as evidence the Italian economy carries real resilience behind the fiscal numbers, not just a temporary improvement in the headline figure. Government stability did a lot of the work in Scope's reasoning too. Giorgia Meloni's coalition has now held power continuously since 2022, an unusually long run by the standards of a country that has cycled through dozens of governments since the war, and Scope cited that durability alongside Italy's adherence to the European Union's new fiscal framework as a reason to trust the deficit reduction holds rather than reverses at the first sign of political pressure. None of that erases the problems Scope flagged on the other side of the ledger, high government debt, weak GDP growth and adverse demographics remain the structural weight dragging on Italy's credit profile regardless of how well the deficit numbers behave in any given year. Those are not problems a single good fiscal year resolves, and they are the likely reason Scope chose to hold at Positive rather than upgrade outright even with the rest of the picture improving. Scope's review is the latest entry in a run that has gone almost entirely in Italy's favour over the past year and a half, Fitch's first upgrade since 2021 in September 2025, Moody's first upgrade in more than two decades that November, and S&P lifting Italy to BBB+ this past April. Each of those moves came with the same basic justification Scope just offered, falling deficits, resilient exports and banks, and a government that has stayed in place long enough to make its fiscal commitments look credible rather than temporary. What makes Scope's decision to hold rather than upgrade notable is the timing, with Italy's next election due by the end of 2027, agencies that have spent eighteen months rewarding Meloni's government for stability now appear to be waiting to see whether that same government, or whatever coalition follows it, is still the one keeping those promises once voters have had their say. --- Originally published by Italian Insider. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://italianinsider.net/en/article/italy-s-credit-rating-keeps-leaning-toward-an-upgrade-and-agencies-seem-to-be-waiting-on-the-2027-election.