PARIS — Giorgia Meloni’s allies are taking a victory lap as French politics takes on an increasingly Italian flavor.

With two prime ministers toppled in nine months and debt piling up under the worried gaze of financial markets, the situation in Paris is increasingly resembling Rome between the 1980s and 1990s, when the country’s notoriously short-lived governments were mired in their own debt crisis.

Meloni’s government, meanwhile, is proving more effective at reducing Italy’s massive debt and is set to stay in office until the end of its mandate. This gives Italy a taste of the political stability that had been a long-standing trademark of French politics. 

Italy is winning this round of the transalpine rivalry and hasn’t been shy about showing off. Newspapers there and right-wing outlets that back Meloni are embracing the schadenfreude, as is Matteo Salvini, the country’s firebrand deputy prime minister. He was quick to celebrate what he called “an umpteenth defeat” for French President Emmanuel Macron.

While Meloni’s other allies say they are worried about France’s situation, they’re also quick to point out that Rome’s right-wing government is succeeding where France’s centrists are failing.

“In their hearts, some members of the Italian government might not be that upset about the current situation, but they can’t say it in public,” said Marc Lazar, an expert on Franco-Italian relations who teaches at the Luiss University in Rome and at Sciences Po in Paris.

MEP Nicola Procaccini, one of several Italian officials POLITICO spoke to, noted that France has cycled through five prime ministers in less than two years and seems to be losing sway in Brussels just as his country can “influence the rest of the European Union” even more than it did during the heyday of former Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

“Evidently, the policies pushed by Macron’s governments are the wrong policies,” said Procaccini, who co-chairs the ECR group in the European Parliament and is a close ally of Meloni.

A lawmaker from Meloni’s coalition, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, half-jokingly noted that “shortly after French Prime Minister François Bayrou accused us of fiscal dumping, his own government was dumped.”

The lawmaker was referring to Bayrou’s accusation last month that the Italian government was attempting to lure wealthy French households to Italy by offering them tax incentives.

That spat was the latest in a series of disagreements between Rome and Paris that have spilled into public view. Others concerned issues such as migration and abortion rights.

Who’s who?

Since France’s snap elections in the summer of 2024 delivered a hung parliament, Macron has tried in vain to convince lawmakers in his country to engage in the type of coalition-building exercises common in places like Italy or Germany, but rare in France.

New French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s tenure kicked off in decidedly Italian fashion as well, with Macron asking him to hold consultations with parties about next year’s budget before forming a government. The move resembles the “explorative mandate” that Italian presidents sometimes give to potential prime ministers to talk with parties and assess whether a parliamentary majority could back a future government. 

Lecornu, however, is trying to see whether he can build enough support in the French legislature to pass a budget that ensures France’s finances look less like those of Italy, a country long synonymous with reckless spending and unsustainable debt.  

Both are currently saddled with more than €3 trillion of public debt. But Italy — while also guilty of letting things slip during the pandemic with its notorious “superbonus” tax credit scheme — has done a better job of correcting its course in the last two years.

Italy’s budget deficit is projected to come in at 3.3 percent of gross domestic product this year, while France’s looks likely to hit 5.4 percent of GDP. Rome appears poised to fall in line with European rules that limit the figure to 3 percent of GDP next year, whereas Paris plans to achieve this target only in 2029.

Financial markets have taken note. Investors now consider French bonds as risky as Italy’s. The 10-year bond yields of the two countries closed at exactly the same level of 3.49 percent on Thursday.

While Italy’s credit rating is still lower than the French one, there are signs that the two might be slowly converging. On Friday, Fitch upgraded Italy’s rating from BBB to BBB+, just days after cutting France’s rating from AA- to A+.

During past crises, Italy often resorted to technocratic governments led by outside figures such as Mario Monti and Mario Draghi, and backed by mainstream parties.

However, widespread anger at the reforms spearheaded under Monti helped fuel the rise of populist parties such as the 5Star Movement and the League, said Lazar, the Franco-Italian affairs expert. Ten years later, Meloni managed to capitalize on her opposition to Draghi’s government by portraying herself as an anti-establishment leader and winning the 2022 elections.

Macron’s camp likely finds little inspiration in the Italian technocratic option, knowing full well it could further fuel Marine Le Pen’s increasingly popular far-right National Rally ahead of important municipal elections next year and a presidential contest in 2027.

Hanne Cokelaere contributed to this report.