{"id":5625,"date":"2018-12-19T14:50:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T14:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/italy-budget-deal-struck-with-europe-after-months-long-row\/"},"modified":"2018-12-19T14:50:50","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T14:50:50","slug":"italy-budget-deal-struck-with-europe-after-months-long-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/italy-budget-deal-struck-with-europe-after-months-long-row\/","title":{"rendered":"Italy budget deal struck with Europe after months-long row"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"TheImage copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n The Italian stock exchange had a positive Wednesday morning
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After months embroiled in a high-profile diplomatic row, Italy has agreed a deal on its budget with the European Commission.<\/p>\n

The Commission had demanded changes to Italy’s budget plans because of the country’s high debt.<\/p>\n

Italy initially stood its ground, leading EU officials to threaten disciplinary action and potentially expensive fines.<\/p>\n

But European officials said Wednesday’s agreement avoided such action.<\/p>\n

Under the deal, Italy has agreed to lower its planned budget deficit from 2.4% to 2.04% – not as much of a reduction as European officials had hoped for.<\/p>\n

The value of Italy’s concessions is understood to be a little more than \u20ac10bn (\u00a39bn).<\/p>\n

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said the compromise was a win for both sides.<\/p>\n

“We can say in conscience that we have realised in full the wishes of our citizens, demonstrating determination in the economic politics of the government,” he told the country’s senate.<\/p>\n

“We have achieved by means of a complete sense of responsibility, a shared solution, that is good for Italians and satisfactory to Europe.”<\/p>\n

Acknowledging that the concessions were less than what had been asked for, European economic commissioner Pierre Moscovici said it had been a difficult year for the Italian people, citing the collapse of the Genoa bridge in August and the widespread damage caused by recurrent storms.<\/p>\n

“The agreement reached today shows unambiguously that the European Commission is not the enemy of the Italian people,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We are not a machine made up of insensitive bureaucrats, imposing austerity and denying democracy. I hope that today we can move beyond such caricatures.<\/p>\n

“I hope that today we can also put to rest any doubts over Italy’s place in Europe.” <\/p>\n

Valdis Dombrovskis, the commission vice-president in charge of financial stability, said the agreed budget “still raises concern”.<\/p>\n

But he said the deal meant disciplinary action could be avoided – “provided that the agreed measures are fully implemented”.<\/p>\n

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While Italy’s spending is below the 3% deficit rule -which many countries, like France, exceed – its debt pile is the second-highest in Europe, and the main concern for European officials was that the debt not increase.<\/p>\n

Under the deal, the budget has been balanced with a reduced growth forecast, which has been revised downwards from 1.5% to 1% for this year and next. European officials had felt the Italian government’s expectation of 1.5% growth was overly optimistic.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n Reuters<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n Italy’s PM Giuseppe Conte met Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to discuss the impasse last month
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But officials are still concerned about the long-term cost of the Italian government’s two flagship policies – a universal income for poor Italians and the reversal of pension reforms which would lower the retirement age. Those plans have been postponed by a few months as part of the changes to achieve the new budget goals.<\/p>\n

Markets responded positively to the news of the deal, with Italian bonds and stocks performing better on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

The deal still needs to be approved by the Italian parliament. The European Commission said it would watch closely to ensure the agreement was adhered to – and potentially resume its procedures if it is not.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n


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Source<\/a> by [author_name]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The Italian stock exchange had a positive Wednesday morning After months embroiled in a high-profile diplomatic row, Italy has agreed a deal on its budget with the European Commission. The Commission had demanded changes to Italy’s budget plans because of the country’s high debt. Italy initially stood its ground, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5625","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\/5625","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=5625"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5625\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}