(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 31 - Centrist Italia Viva (IV) leader Matteo Renzi has repeated a threat to exit the ruling alliance unless the government changes its Recovery Plan tapping into the EU's Recovery Fund.
    Former centre-left Democratic Party (PD) leader and ex-premier Renzi told business daily Il Sole 24 Ore that he was ready to join the opposition if the European funds were spent badly.
    Italy is set to get the biggest single chunk of the Recovery Fund, 209 billion euros, if its projects are approved.
    Renzi has objected to the setting up of a task force to implement the Recovery Plan, saying it delegitimises ministries and parliament.
    "Italy has an incredible pile of money to spend, and I just want to understand how we're going to spend it," Renzi told Il Sole.
    "I will not be an accomplice to the worst squandering of public money.
    "I'm in favour of spending it all and spending it well.
    "But if someone wants to spend it badly they can do so without us".
    Premier Giuseppe Conte on Wednesday vowed a "political synthesis" for Italy's COVID Recovery Plan and said cabinet would meet in early January to ward off Renzi's threat to bring down the government over the way the plan will be implemented.
    Conte was speaking at his year-end press conference shortly after Renzi said "we want stability but if there is immobilism then the legislature ends".
    Conte said the current "verification" of government support would be accelerated and the Recovery Plan would be finalised by mid February.
    "We are looking to last out the legislative term (until 2023) but we must not tread water," said the premier, who leads an alliance of the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S), the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), the smaller leftwing Free and Equal (LeU) part, and former PD leader Renzi's IV.
    Conte reiterated that the final document on the Recovery Plan would be "ready by the middle of February".
    He said that if IV pulls its support he would go to parlaiment.
    Referring to Renzi's threat, Conte said "ultimatums are not admissible; I'm in favour of dialogue." If a snap election is indeed called, he said he would not run, stressing that "electoral campaigns are not for me".
    Finally, on the use of the European Stability Mechanism's 37 billion euros for COVID spending, which the PD advocates in the face of stiff opposition from the M5S, Conte said that "we'll discuss everything but parliament will decide".
    Conte is an academic and lawyer who was plucked from obscurity by the previous government led by the M5S in partnership with the nationalist League party of former interior minister Matteo Salvini.
    Salvini pulled the plug on that administration in August 2019 banking on a snap election which polls said he would have won but was dismayed to instead see the M5S team up with their old foe the PD for a new government. (ANSA).