EU will reject budget says EU

(ANSA) - Rome, October 17 - The European Union will reject Italy's 2019 budget bill, the budget commissioner said Wednesday, prompting Italian officials to say the measure, with its deficit of 2.4% of GDP, would not change.
    European Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger that Italy's budget will be rejected.
    He later clarified that it was his "personal opinion, based on the numbers, that is it very likely that we will have to ask Italy to correct the draft budget." He stressed "I did not say there was a decision by the Commission on Italy, nor that the letter with the rejection (of the budget) will be sent on Thursday or Friday".
    Earlier Der Spiegel online reported that Oettinger had told it the European Commission will reject Italy's budget bill. The magazine said a letter from Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici should arrive in Rome on Thursday or Friday.
    Oettinger said "the hypothesis that the 2019 budget draft is not reconcilable with the EU's existing obligations has been confirmed." Moscovici will not make a counter-proposal, Der Speigel said, but will restrict himself to pointing out the violations of the reference data.
    Rome sent the budget draft to the EC on Tuesday night, at the last minute, Der Spiegel said.
    The EC is reacting unusually quickly, it said, since it had two weeks to reply.
    Italy will now have to present a new draft, the magazine said.
    Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said, in a comment addressed at Oettinger, that "we are convinced about the budget (bill), we aren't going to change it. Stop it and let the Italian government work for the Italians". "Brussels shouldn't even dream of sending us the troika," Salvini added. The other deputy premier, Luigi Di Maio, said Oettinger "and all the European commissioners should start behaving like serious people and bite their tongues three times before making statements, as Signore Palomar did, in Calvino's tale, who if he was still convinced at the third bite of the thing he was about to say, he said it; otherwise he kept silent. In this way he spent entire weeks and months in silence".
    Premier Giuseppe Conte meanwhile went into talks with Angela Merkel ahead of a two-day European Union summit hoping to convince the German chancellor on an Italian budget that looks virtually certain to be rejected by the EU because of its deficit of 2.4% of GDP.
    There is no room to change the 2019 budget bill, Conte said ahead of the bilateral with Merkel.
    Asked if there was a "margin" for change, he said "we have studied it very well, so I should say there isn't".
    The premier said "I will bring the message of a budget that we have studied very well, it is a budget to reverse the trend, we want to grow".
    Asked about the likelihood of the 2019 budget changing if it is rejected by the EU, Conte said Wednesday "I trust in constructive dialogue, we will certainly get observations and we will address them".