We won’t retreat half a centimetre on our budget, Salvini warns EU
A DEFIANT Italy refused to step down in an intensifying row with the EU over its proposed budget yesterday, despite concerns that its spending plans will push the country deeper into debt.
Italy’s 2019 budget consists of an extravagant mix of tax cuts, a lowering of the retirement age and a minimum guaranteed income for poor Italians that is expected to cost around €37billion (£32 billion) and will hike next year’s deficit to 2.4 per cent of GDP.
At 131 per cent of GDP, Italy already has the second highest debt per capita in the EU, behind Greece, and the spending plans have raised fears of precipitating a new financial crisis within the bloc.
The European Commission sent a warning letter last week that criticised the budget as a deviation from spending rules “without precedent in the history of the Stability Pact”.
But Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, insisted that the budget was well conceived and would promote desperately needed growth.
The government sent a letter to the Commission in which “we explained why we set it out in this way, we explained the direction of our economic policy, the objectives we intend to achieve”, Mr Conte told the Foreign Press Association in Rome.
If the budget is rejected by Brussels, “we will sit around a table and assess things together”, he said.
His interior minister, Matteo Salvini, was more bombastic, pledging: “We won’t take even half a centimetre’s step back.”
Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s chancellor, demanded that Brussels reject the proposed budget unless significant concessions are made by Rome.
The European Commission is expected to announce its next move today.
Mr Conte will be packing his bags by then for a trip to Moscow and a meeting with Vladimir Putin, as Italy’s populist coalition tilts towards Russia in a move that has alarmed Western allies.
His visit tomorrow will come a week after a similar trip made by Mr Salvini, who has long professed admiration for President Putin. Mr Salvini said that he felt more at home in Russia than in many European countries.
That earned him a rebuke from Guy Verhofstadt, the leader of the liberal group in the European Parliament, who tweeted: “If Salvini feels so at home in Moscow in bed with Putin, why doesn’t he stay there? He’s betraying the collective European interest.”
Italy’s empathy with Russia goes back years but has been stepped up a level by the current populist government, a coalition between Mr Salvini’s hard-right League party and the antiestablishment Five Star Movement.