Alfano attacks PD 'impatience'

(ANSA) - Rome, May 30 - Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano, leader of the Democratic Party's (PD) junior government partner the centre-right Popular Area (AP), attacked an electoral law deal with the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S).
    And amid market jitters, European Economic and Financial Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said elections were "never a problem".
    Alfano said he did not understand "the PD's impatience to take Italy to the vote three or four months early, in the middle of the budget bill's passage".
    A bill creating a new German-style electoral law is set to hit the Constitutional affairs committee of the Lower House after an agreement between the ruling centre-left PD and the M5S on a German-style proportional representation (PR) system with an entry bar set at 5% and no winner's bonus.
    Alfano appealed to the PD and its leader Matteo Renzi, the former premier, to save the economy from losing billions of euros amid a fall in stock prices and a sharp rise in the spread between German and Italian 10-year bonds.
    As for the 5% entry bar, Alfano said the AP would "join with others and get over it".
    Meanwhile ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi, leader of the centre-right Forza Italia party which has already signalled an OK to the new law, said that "if it was for me I'd put the bar at 8%." European Economic Affairs Commissioner Moscovici said amid the talk of an autumn election in Italy Tuesday that "elections are never a problem, it is a characteristic of democracy to be in an electoral cycle" and "we are prepared to take all decisions for all kinds of situations". Moscovici said "we are continuing to work with the Italian government", with "confidence and intelligence".
    photo: Alfano with Renzi last year when they were respectively interior minister and premier