Di Maio says No to 'crushing' ESM reform

(ANSA) - Rome, November 20 - Plans for the reform of the European Stability Mechanism are causing turmoil within Premier Giuseppe Conte's government with Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio saying Wednesday that an overhaul of the eurozone's bailout fund that punishes Italy must be averted. "A reform of the ESM that crushes Italy is not feasible," 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Di Maio told Wednesday's Corriere della Sera.
    The EU is set to sign off next month on a reform that would make the ESM more akin to the IMF, with support for States in financial difficulty made conditional on debt restructuring.
    Italy is considered by experts to be vulnerable to market turbulence due to its huge public debt of over 2,000 billion euros.
    The reform was agreed by European finance ministers in June.
    At the time, Giovanni Tria was Italy's economy minister under Conte's first government, which was backed by the 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the League.
    Since then Roberto Gualtieri of the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) has replaced Tria after a new coalition was formed following League leader Salvini's decision to pull the plug on the first Conte government in August. Conte is reportedly aiming to postpone the overhaul, sources said. Conte on Wednesday accused authoritarian nationalist League leader Matteo Salvini of being in a state of delirium after the latter said the former had agreed to the reform of the ESM in secret. The reform of the eurozone's safety net was negotiated in June, when Salvini was interior minister and deputy premier in Conte's first government. "Today we have discovered that negotiations have been taking place for a year - there is collective delirium about the ESM that has led the leader of the opposition, the same one who took part in talks on the ESM, and has not realised that he was at the (talks) table without knowing it," Conte said.
    Salvini responded by calling Conte a "liar" and saying that the League had "always been against the ESM reform".