Northern League takes Italy to EU court on pensions-update

(ANSA) - Milan, May 18 - Northern League Secretary Matteo Salvini said Monday the party will take the Italian government to a European court over a previous administration's pension reforms.
    Salvini said Monday the fight is over pension reforms passed by the former technocratic government led by economist Mario Monti.
    Monti was appointed in late 2011 to steer Italy through a severe debt crisis, and remained premier until April 2013.
    The League announcement came the same day that Premier Matteo Renzi's government announced a decree on measures to repay some of pension money withheld under the 2011 law.
    Consumer group Codacons said it would appeal that measure in the courts because it is not equally applied to all pensioners.
    One of the controversial measures Monti's technocratic government passed to restore market confidence amid feverish interest rates was the so-called 'Fornero' pension reform, named after Monti's labour minister, Elsa Fornero. "We have instructed a lawyer to present an appeal against the Fornero legislation at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, accompanied by the signatures," of people waiting for their pensions to be reinstated, said Salvini. Renzi "is losing shots by giving 500 euros to some people in August, penalizing others," Salvini added. Renzi announced a plan to give some 3.7 million pensioners 500 euros each to compensate them for inflation adjustments taken away by the Monti government. The European Court of Human Rights recently condemned Italy for the decision.
    Meanwhile, consumer group Codacons said Monday that it is ready to appeal the new government decree that affects some lower-income pensions but not all of those that 2ere included in the 2011 decree which the Constitutional Court last month rejected.
    Codacons said the new decree "appears unconstitutional and discriminatory" rather than treating all citizens equally.