ROME: Italy`s parliament on Saturday approved the 2025 budget, aiming to both appease EU demands to lower the eurozone nation`s deficit and honour Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni`s pledge to cut taxes.

Over half of the package, worth some 30 billion euros ($31 billion), is devoted to cuts to tax and social security contributions for lowand middle-income earners.

Rome is having to perform a fine fiscal balancing act, after Brussels took Italy to task earlier this year over its debt worth nearly 3 trillion euros, the second highest as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) in the European Union.-AFP