How do Euroskeptic parties adjust their rhetoric when the European Union expands its fiscal and redistributive role? We address this question by examining the impact of the next-generation EU (NGEU) program on parliamentary debates in Italy, the largest beneficiary of EU recovery funds. Drawing on an original dataset of over 700 hand-coded parliamentary statements covering 30 debates in the Italian Chamber of Deputies (2018–2024), we show that the launch of NGEU coincided with a measurable increase in supportive rhetoric toward the EU, especially among parties with Euroskeptic profiles, a shift that is not solely attributable to changes in government status. Our findings suggest that EU-level redistributive policies can contribute to altering, at least temporarily, domestic party discourse in parliament, pointing to the domestic political relevance of fiscal integration
