(ANSA) - Rome, June 24 - Italian Premier Matteo Renzi on Tuesday set the priorities for Italy's duty presidency of the European Union in the second half of 2014, confirming it will try to steer the union away from austerity towards full-blown growth policies.
    Europe must also step up the fight against record unemployment and work together to combat waves of migrants from wartorn or troubled lands crossing the Mediterranean, he said.
    Speaking a day after German Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared to break a tacit taboo about flexibility on infrastructure spending within existing stability pacts, Renzi made it clear that the pact was just as much about growth as it was about fiscal discipline - and Germany, he noted, had been one of the first countries to break the letter of the law and prime pumps outside parameters a decade ago.
    So the fiscal disciplinarians who still ruled out all growth-stoking spending were wrong, Renzi said. EU partners who speak only of budget stability and not growth are in fact violating the EU's stability and growth pact, Renzi said.
    "There is no possible stability without growth; without growth there is no movement," he said.
    Europe must change tack or it will not grow, Renzi said. "Either Europe changes direction or there is no possible chance of development and growth," he said.
    Europe "cannot just be the land of bureaucracy where you live by cavils, limits and parameters," Renzi told the House. "Millions of young people did not die so we could get caught up in parameters," he said.
    There are different ways of respecting EU rules on financial and budgetary discipline, said Renzi, who has been pushing for flexibility on major infrastructure spending within the pacts. Italy "has always respected the rules but there are different ways of doing so," he said.
    And Rome is not asking to break the 3% limit on budget deficits compared to GDP to stoke growth, as Germany did in the past, Renzi said. "We aren't asking to breach the 3% rule, unlike what Germany did in the past," he told the House.
    And rather than squabbling about who should be the next heads of the European Council of the European Parliament, the EU is now trying to set policy ahead of mere nominations, the Italian premier observed.
    The EU is putting "method before names", Renzi told the House. "The strategic lines come before nominations," he said, claiming this was to a great extent a result of Italian campaigning.
    Europe must also work together more than before in tackling the migrant emergency in the Mediterranean, Renzi said.
    The EU cannot turn a blind eye to migrant deaths but must do more to help Italy's Mare Nostrum search-and-rescue operations, he reiterated. "Europe, when it turns away at the sight of dead bodies, is not worthy of calling itself a civilised Europe," the premier said. Renzi told the House that the Italian duty presidency would be a success because of the determined and energetic approach Rome would assume.
    The premier told MPs from all parties that "we must recognise that we are taking a strong Italy into Europe, no matter what our political affiliation and the judgement of the last elections".
    Starting with the upcoming EU summit, on Thursday and Friday, he said, Italy will "bring its voice into Europe with great determination and conviction".