Nationalist League leader Matteo
Salvini renewed his offensive against Premier Giuseppe Conte
over the reform of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)
bailout fund on Thursday and sought to bring President Sergio
Mattarella into the row.
"Conte has carried out an attack on the Italian people,"
Salvini said in the Lower House before calling on Mattarella to
"make sure the Constitution is applied".
The centre-right opposition says the ESM reform penalises
Italy and is "not amendable" by parliament after Conte agreed to
it.
The League has requested a meeting with Mattarella.
Conte has mocked the League and Salvini over its complaints
about the ESM, pointing out that they were in government in his
first executive when the reform was agreed in June.
"I will soon be in parliament to clarify to all of the
Italian people what is happening with the negotiation and how we
got to this stage," Conte said during a visit to Ghana.
It was later announced that the premier will brief the House
on the ESM reform on Monday at 13:00.
Conte said "Monday is the first possible time, as always I'll
be in parliament, in a transparent way, to report all the
circumstances.
"To those who are making noise and threatening today, I say:
let salvini go to prosecutors and fiule a complaint, and I will
sue him for libel".
The EU is set to sign off next month on a reform that would
make the ESM more akin to the IMF, with support for States in
financial difficulty made conditional on debt restructuring.
Italy is considered by experts to be vulnerable to market
turbulence due to its huge public debt of over 2,000 billion
euros.
Premier Conte is said to be thinking about trying to postpone
the reform at an EU summit next month.
Industry Minister Stefano Patuanelli, a member of the ruling
anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), said he found the
commotion the League are kicking up over the ESM to be "surreal"
while adding that slowdown on this issue would be "a good idea".
On Wednesday Economy Minister Roberto Gualtieri called the
League's concerns "comical".
Further, he said that the backstop allowing the ESM to be
used by the fund for banking resolutions, "doubles the funds
available to save banks, and is therefore a success for Italy".
The proposed reform sparked a bad-tempered clash between
Conte and opposition leader Salvini last week.
Conte accused Salvini of being in a state of delirium after
the latter said the former had agreed to the ESM reform in
secret.
The reform of the eurozone's safety net was negotiated in
June, when Salvini was interior minister and deputy premier in
Conte's first government.
Conte said Salvini had OK'd the reform "unbeknownst to him",
echoing a jibe made years ago about then interior minister
Claudio Scajola's denial of his purchase of a flat overlooking
the Colosseum.
The leader of the M5S's main government partner, the
centre-left Democratic Party (PD), Lazio Governor Nicola
Zingaretti, said Thursday that "Salvini gave the OK" for the ESM
reform and was "lying to Italy".
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