Italy has spent a decade arguing with Brussels about how much room it has to invest. That argument matters. It has also crowded out a domestic argument that is at least as consequential, which is whether the country is any good at deciding what to invest in.
The evidence is uncomfortable. Public investment in Italy is not primarily constrained by the availability of money at the moment. Funds allocated to local infrastructure regularly go unspent, projects reach the tendering stage and stop, and the same works appear in successive plans with new dates attached. That is not a ceiling problem. It is a selection and delivery problem.
Selection is the harder half. A good appraisal process compares projects that are not alike, says no to most of them, and publishes the reasoning. Italy has the technical capacity to do this and generally chooses not to, because the political cost of a published no is immediate and the benefit of a better project is diffuse and arrives after the next election.
None of that is an argument for accepting a tighter fiscal position. It is an argument for treating the two questions as separate. More room used badly produces a stock of half finished works and a stronger case for the people who wanted less room in the first place. The most persuasive thing Italy could take into the next negotiation is a record of spending the current allocation well, on time, and in public.