Italy won on 'content and style' at EU summit, says Renzi

Premier Matteo Renzi said Italy had won "battles" to have its demands on both "content and style" met at the European Union summit in Brussels on Friday.
    The final summit document said the EU should make full and better use of the flexibility for growth-stoking spending in the Growth and Stability Pact, something Renzi has long been lobbying for.
    EU leaders also voted by majority at the summit to nominate former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker as the next president of the European Commission.
    But Rome only agreed to back Juncker after the candidate of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP), which won the most seats in last month's European Parliament elections, agreed to put his agenda, including action to promote growth, down in writing.
    "I wouldn't have backed Juncker without that document, and because there was a political deal between coalition forces," Renzi, the leader of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), told a news conference at the end of the summit.
    But what Renzi, whose position was strengthened after the PD won over 40% of the vote in Italy in last month's European elections, was the emphasis on growth in the final document.
    "For the first time the focus is on on growth," Renzi said.
    "Insisting on growth is a turning point for Europe.
    "The document says that if a country is serious about structural reforms, it has the right to greater flexibility.
    "This political point is important for us. We feel that you must not break the rules of the pact, but those who talk only about stability and not about growth break the principles of the pact". Renzi said his government was "serious" about winning the right to this flexibility with its ambitious programme of domestic structural reforms to be completed by May 2017.