(supersedes previous)Bundesbank
President Jens Weidmann said Tuesday Italian Economy Minister
Pier Carlo Padoan's ideas on sharing eurozone risks are "too
optimistic".
Fiscal union would fail to create "strong incentives to
respect the rules in the absence of a tough common oversight
mechanism," he said in a speech at the German embassy in Rome.
Weidmann added he sees "enormous obstacles" to such union
and no political will to remove them.
"Member States will have to submit to EU fiscal
authority...and Italian Premier Matteo Renzi has said...Italy
will not be dictated to by Brussels bureaucrats," he said.
Weidmann added that the European Commission is always
compromising to the detriment of respect for EU rules on
balanced budgets.
Its tasks, he said, should be handed over to a "European
fiscal authority (in order to) solve this problem".
"If one fears giving up national sovereignty, strengthening
the existing framework remains the only alternative in order to
make monetary union more stable," the German central bank chief
said.
Italy is among EU members who have been violating the EU
Stability and Growth Pact since the single currency was adopted
in 1995, Weidmann pointed out.
"Some states including Italy have been breaking the rules
more often than they have abided by them, ever since monetary
union began," Weidmann said.
"In 2003-2004, Germany also contributed to weakening the
binding force of the rules," he added.
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