Italian Premier Matteo Renzi on
Monday said Italy would make its contribution to the Turkey
refugee aid package, ending a weeks-long resistance that had
sparked friction with Brussels.
"At this point we will give our contribution to Turkey to
save human beings," Renzi said on a visit to Nigeria, while
insisting that the EU could open all the infringement procedures
it liked for exceeding budget parameters but Italy would keep on
saving lives in the Mediterranean.
"We will make every effort to save human lives in the
Mediterranean: we have saved, and we will continue to do so,
thousands of lives while Europe turned the other way. Before the
Stability (and Growth) Pact there is a pact of humanity".
Renzi went on to say that all migrants are equal and
Italy will not be provoked by the EU.
"We think all migrants are equal," the premier said in
the Nigerian capital.
"To envisage treating differently the cost of saving
Eritrean children seems absurd to me - just a bureaucratic
perversion.
"But we will not be provoked, in spite of the professional
quarrelers in Brussels trying to relaunch from Brussels as
though there were Serie A and Serie B lives".
Earlier, Renzi had reiterated that Italy was no longer
taking orders from the European Union, amid the fresh clash over
the cost of coping with the migrant and refugee crisis.
In his e-news, the combative premier asserted that far from
following diktats from Brussels, Italy was now in fact leading
the EU.
The premier spoke as the European Commission made it clear
that an aid package to Turkey for the refugee emergency was not
to be counted in the Stability and Growth Pact.
The EC also reminded Rome Monday that a decision on its
request for budget flexibility will be made, along with the
final verdict on the 2016 budget, in the spring.
Italy is "no longer taking orders" from the EU, Renzi wrote
on his website.
"Reforms are now laws, and economic fundamentals have
returned to a plus sign after three years of recession," he
wrote.
"We can go back to doing our job, which is to lead Europe -
not to go take orders in some palace in Brussels".
Italy is no longer indebted to Europe, Renzi went on. "For
years, Italy was morally indebted to European institutions (and
to) its own citizens, because it spoke of reforms it didn't
carry out," he added.
Italy has been quarreling with the European Commission
recently over its veto of a fund for refugees in Turkey, saying
it will only contribute to the fund if the EU agrees to free its
spending on migrant rescue, processing and hosting from
Stability Pact constraints.
European Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas,
meanwhile, said that the EU executive stated in December that
member States' contributions to the package of three billion
euros in aid for Turkey in exchange for cooperation over the
refugee crisis are excluded from deficit calculations.
Italy has been accused of holding up the aid package, with
Renzi saying the money must be outside the parameters of the
Stability and Growth Pact.
"The Commission had already clarified in December that the
national contributions to the three-billion-euro fund for Turkey
are notconsidered in the deficit calculations for the Stability
and Growth Pact," Schinas said.
Also Monday in Brussels, another European Commission
spokesperson said that the EU executive will decide whether it
has granted Italy's request to have flexibility in the
application of budget regulations for its spending on asylum
seekers in "spring".
The spokesperson added that the valuation will be made "on
a case-per-case basis, ex post, on the basis of the expenditure
undertaken".
On Friday Renzi said after a bilateral meeting in Berlin
with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he hoped Brussels
would give a response to Italy on the budget flexibility request
this week.
Italy has also requested flexibility for the terrorism
emergency, among other things.
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