{"id":4347,"date":"2018-11-14T07:07:21","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T07:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/italy-budget-rome-rejects-european-commission-demands\/"},"modified":"2018-11-14T07:07:21","modified_gmt":"2018-11-14T07:07:21","slug":"italy-budget-rome-rejects-european-commission-demands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/italy-budget-rome-rejects-european-commission-demands\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy budget: Rome rejects European Commission demands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div property=\"articleBody\">\n<figure class=\"media-landscape has-caption full-width lead\"><span class=\"image-and-copyright-container\"><\/p>\n<p>                <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"js-image-replace\" alt=\"Italy's co-Deputy Prime Ministers Luigi Di Maio (left) and Matteo Salvini. File photo\" src=\"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/320\/cpsprodpb\/E030\/production\/_104329375_eef18e85-c646-476d-ace9-5598b9f64430.jpg\" width=\"976\" height=\"549\"\/><span class=\"off-screen\">Image copyright<\/span><br \/>\n                 <span class=\"story-image-copyright\">EPA<\/span><\/p>\n<p>            <\/span><figcaption class=\"media-caption\"><span class=\"off-screen\">Image caption<\/span><br \/>\n                <span class=\"media-caption__text\"><br \/>\n                    Italy&#8217;s co-Deputy Prime Ministers Luigi Di Maio (left) and Matteo Salvini made defiant comments<br \/>\n                <\/span><br \/>\n            <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">The Italian government has defied the European Commission (EC) by sticking to its big-spending budget plan.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said a deficit target of 2.4% and a growth forecast of 1.5% were unchanged.<\/p>\n<p>The EC &#8211; worried about the impact of high spending on already high levels of Italy&#8217;s debt &#8211; had told Rome to revise the budget or face possible fines.<\/p>\n<p>It had set Tuesday as a deadline to Italy&#8217;s governing populist parties to respond to its objections.<\/p>\n<p>The EC&#8217;s warning to Italy, the eurozone&#8217;s third-biggest economy, is an unprecedented move with regard to an European Union member state.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"story-body__unordered-list\">\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-45751416\" class=\"story-body__link\">What&#8217;s behind Italy&#8217;s economic turbulence?<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"story-body__list-item\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-44168602\" class=\"story-body__link\">Italy populists take power: What comes next?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">Why does Italy want to spend more?<\/h2>\n<p>Mr Salvini, who leads the League party, was speaking after a cabinet meeting on the highly controversial issue.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement, he said the government would stick to the budget&#8217;s main parameters. <\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Luigi Di Maio, the deputy PM from the Five Star Movement coalition partner, said: &#8220;We have the conviction that this is the budget needed for the country to get going again.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The government has vowed to &#8220;end poverty&#8221; with a minimum income for the unemployed.<\/p>\n<p>Other measures include tax cuts and scrapping extensions to the retirement age &#8211; fulfilling several key campaign promises from the election in March.<\/p>\n<p>A defiant Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte insisted earlier that the budget deficit would go no higher than 2.4% of GDP in 2019, although the target is three times than that of the previous government.<\/p>\n<p>The government argues that servicing its debt of 131% of national output &#8211; second only to bailed-out Greece &#8211; would hurt Italians, who have still not recovered from the decade-old financial crisis.<\/p>\n<p>Italy&#8217;s economy is still smaller than it was in 2008. The governing coalition argues an increase in spending would kick-start growth.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"story-body__crosshead\">How bad is Italy&#8217;s debt?<\/h2>\n<p>Italy&#8217;s neutral Finance Minister Giovanni Tria and international observers had hoped the country would keep its deficit under 2% of GDP &#8211; and perhaps as low as 1.6%.<\/p>\n<p>While 2.4% falls well short of the 3% deficit limit under eurozone rules, Italy&#8217;s debt level is alarming. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For the first time the Commission is obliged to request a euro area country to revise its draft budgetary plan but we see no alternative than to request the Italian authorities to do so,&#8221; the EC Vice-President for the euro, Valdis Dombrovskis, said last month.<\/p>\n<p>He pointed out that Italian taxpayers were having to spend as much servicing the national debt as on education.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Breaking rules can appear tempting at the first look &#8211; it can provide the illusion of breaking free,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is tempting to try and cure debt with more debt. At some point, the debt weighs too heavy&#8230; you end up having no freedom at all,&#8221; Mr Dombrovskis said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-46203605\">Source<\/a> by <a href=\"\">[author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image copyright EPA Image caption Italy&#8217;s co-Deputy Prime Ministers Luigi Di Maio (left) and Matteo Salvini made defiant comments The Italian government has defied the European Commission (EC) by sticking to its big-spending budget plan. Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said a deficit target of 2.4% and a growth forecast of 1.5% were unchanged. The &hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}