Premier Matteo Renzi said Monday that last weekend's election outcomes in Spain and Poland and the January victory of Premier Alexis Tsipras's anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece show that the European Union must reform itself to survive. "The wind from Greece, the wind from Spain, the wind from Poland, do not blow in the same direction, they blow in the opposite direction," Renzi told Tuscan TV channel Rtv38. "But all these winds say that Europe must change. "I hope Italy will be able to powerfully take the voice of change to Europe in the next few weeks and months," added the premier, who has lobbied, with some success, for the EU to adopt greater flexibility in the application of its budget rules. The anti-austerity Podemos party made big gains in last weekend's local elections in Spain and Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski lost a presidential run-off to conservative challenger Andrzej Duda.
"The electoral results in Spain and Poland are a nice big hammering for the defenders of a Europe of the banks and the slaves of Brussels," Northern League leader Matteo Salvini told his party's Radio Padania station.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
