Former industry minister and Euroskeptic economist Paolo Savona said Monday he had been "gravely misused" by President Sergio Mattarella in being rejected for the economy ministry in a putative League-Five Star government. "I suffered a grave injustice from the country's top institution on the basis of a paradoxical prejudice that I wanted to leave the euro and not my (real views), which I profess and I repeated in my statement, criticised by most of the media without even illustrating its content," he said. In the statement, which he hoped might persuade Mattarella to ratify his appointment, Savona said he was not against the euro per se and was in favour of a reformed EU that no longer espoused austerity.
He said the debt-GDP ratio should primarily be brought down by growth, not spending cuts.
"It's a matter of deciding if the pro-Europeans are those who are creating the conditions for the end of the EU or those, like me, who are asking for its reform to save the objectives which it had set itself," Savona said, stressing Italy's problems with poverty, falling incomes and rising inequality.
Savona went on to say that the putative League-M5S government led by law professor Giuseppe Conte "would have been able to count on the support of Macron if it had not suffered unacceptable, because unfounded, vetoes.
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