Italy PM Conte seeks budget breakthrough as Salvini repositions on EU
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is seeking to present revised budget figures in order to end a deadlock with the European Commission in a meeting on Wednesday, a source told Reuters.
Earlier in the year, the commission rejected Italy’s expansionary budget for 2019, which had forecast the deficit rising to 2.4% of gross domestic product next year from a projected 1.8% in 2018, saying that it broke EU rules, but Conte will meet with the body’s president, Jean-Claude Juncker to push for a breakthrough.
A Bloomberg report citing an anonymous official stated that the new deficit figure would be 2% but a government source told Reuters that Italy’s governing coalition partners were unwilling to reduce the target to below 2.2%.
The ruling 5-Star Movement-League government has repeatedly insisted that an expansive budget is necessary in order to finance key government pledges and boost sluggish growth.
Helping the Italians' cause was French President Emmanuel Macron’s newly announced measures to reduce hardship after violent protests, which would likely see their neighbours breach the EU's 3% deficit-to-GDP threshold.
One of Italy's two deputy prime ministers, Matteo Salvini, who heads the League party, warned that negotiations may sour if there were "prejudice against Italy while a blind eye is closed for others".
The news came as Salvini looked to repositioning himself and his League party to capture the middle ground of Italian politics by vowing to transform the EU “from the inside” rather than by leaving the bloc.
Salvini became the leader of the party in 2013, building it from a niche entity to the most popular party in the country by campaigning on a fiercely anti-euro and anti-immigrant platform.
Giovanni Orsina, professor of politics at Rome’s LUISS University, said: "When he had 3% of the vote Salvini needed very extreme rhetoric to get himself noticed and build support, but now he is in government he doesn’t have to be so radical and he is moving towards the centre."
The deputy prime minister has indicated that he could seek to forge a political "axis" with Berlin, despite the League having accused Germany of condemning Italy to economic decline while using the Eurozone for its own benefit.
He did, however, acknowledge that the last "axis" between the two nations, then under the stewardship of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, had not gone well.