German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble said Monday that Italian Premier Matteo Renzi
is on the right track with his far-reaching reform program.
Renzi "is following an absolutely correct approach with
regard to the deep structural reforms in his country," Schaeuble
told Yahoo in an interview, adding he hoped the Italian leader
would succeed.
Renzi has been pushing for sweeping reforms including
changes to the Italian labour market, justice system, and tax
regulations in an effort to make the economy more efficient and
to create employment.
The cabinet last month approved sweeping measures to revamp
Italy's judicial, political and economic systems, including the
government's so-called Unblock Italy decree designed to cut red
tape, promote investments and lift the Italian economy out of
recession, its third in six years.
Renzi pledged 4.6 billion euros for five airport
investments and 3.8 billion euros for projects "that are ready
to be built", and confirmed the government will continue to
offer his trademark 80-euro monthly tax bonus for some 11
million low-income Italians "for the next few years".
The cabinet also approved spending of 10 billion euros over
"the next 12 months" on public works in Italy's impoverished
south.
Schaeuble's favorable assessment of Renzi stood in apparent
contrast to his later remarks that State-run job creation
programs in the eurozone are the wrong approach, and that the
sustainable way forward is more efficient investment of private
funds.
As well, Renzi and his French counterpart, Manuel Valls,
were on the front pages of leading French papers after they
entered into a so-called "tortellini pact" on Sunday.
The Italian premier invited fellow leftist European leaders
to the Democratic Party (PD) Festa dell'Unità (Unity Feast) in
the northern Italian city of Bologna on Sunday, where he called
on them to enter into a pact to promote a socialist agenda in
Europe in front of a plate of tortellini.
Spanish Socialist party leader Pedro Sanchez, Party of
European Socialists leader Achim Post and Dutch Labour Party MP
Diederik Samson also participated in the tortellini pact, as
Renzi dubbed it.
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