Premier Matteo Renzi on Wednesday played down the importance of a letter that the European Commission is set to send his government asking for clarification about its 2015 budget plan. "Reports of a letter from the EU about the budget evoke Gods-knows-what procedure, message or threat," Renzi told the Senate ahead of this week's EU summit. "But all this is natural, just like it's natural that Italy wants to be a lead player by using its voice ... without external diktats".
ANSA sources in Brussels said that the EC will send a letter, or possibly an email, to the Italian government later in the day. The communication will alert Rome about the danger of breaking the EU's financial rules with a budget aimed at boosting the recession-battered Italian economy, the sources said. It will ask for clarifications about the size of the planned reduction in the structural deficit for next year, which Premier Matteo Renzi's government has said will be 0.1% of GDP.
According to some reports, the EC wants a much bigger reduction in the structural deficit - which, unlike the nominal budget deficit figure, is adjusted for the business cycle - of around 0.5% of GDP in order to make inroads into Italy's massive public debt.
But the letter will also ask about the financial coverage for measures in the budget, which features 18 billion euros in tax cuts and 15 billion in spending reductions, and about structural economic reforms, the sources said. The EC itself, which will also send letters to four other countries, including France, stressed Wednesday that the request for further information does not imply a rejection of the budget plan.
"The consultations that are currently taking place about the budget law do not prejudice the final judgment of the Commission," a spokesperson for Economic Affairs Commissioner Jyrki Katainen said Wednesday. "It will not necessarily be negative".
There is speculation that one of the last acts of the outgoing commission will be to ask Rome to make corrections to its 2015 budget plan.
But Renzi said any major issues from now on will be handled by the team led by Jean-Claude Juncker after it takes over next month.
"The main questions being discussed with our European partners, those called for and stressed by the Italian duty presidency (of the EU), will be fully addressed by the new commission," he said. Renzi also reiterated his call for the EU to be more flexible in applying budget rules to make room for growth-boosting measures. "At the last EU council the word growth returned for the first time after a long debate with the Dutch and the other architects of rigour," Renzi said. "A debate on how Europe must try to emerge from the tight margins of rigour to impose a strategy (of growth) cannot be delayed.
"I'd like the new European institutions to show a little more courage and pride at belonging to this community.
"There isn't just an Italian problem, the whole eurozone is the Cinderella of international development".
But Juncker appeared to suggest Renzi will not get the policy sea change he is seeking in an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg before it approved his new executive. "The stability rules do not change," Juncker said, stressing the Growth and Stability Pact already features flexibility mechanisms. He added the that "there will be no epoch-making turning points" with the arrival of the new EC lineup. He said that "budget discipline, with flexibility and structural reforms" are necessary to give new impetus to the European economy.
The former Luxembourg prime minister said that the 300-billion-euro investment plan he has promised will be presented "before Christmas".
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
