The European Union will reject
Italy's 2019 budget bill, the budget commissioner said
Wednesday, prompting Italian officials to say the measure, with
its deficit of 2.4% of GDP, would not change.
European Budget Commissioner Guenther Oettinger that Italy's
budget will be rejected.
He later clarified that it was his "personal opinion, based
on the numbers, that is it very likely that we will have to ask
Italy to correct the draft budget."
He stressed "I did not say there was a decision by the
Commission on Italy, nor that the letter with the rejection (of
the budget) will be sent on Thursday or Friday".
Earlier Der Spiegel online reported that Oettinger had told
it the European Commission will reject Italy's budget bill.
The magazine said a letter from Economic Affairs Commissioner
Pierre Moscovici should arrive in Rome on Thursday or Friday.
Oettinger said "the hypothesis that the 2019 budget draft is
not reconcilable with the EU's existing obligations has been
confirmed."
Moscovici will not make a counter-proposal, Der Speigel said,
but will restrict himself to pointing out the violations of the
reference data.
Rome sent the budget draft to the EC on Tuesday night, at the
last minute, Der Spiegel said.
The EC is reacting unusually quickly, it said, since it had
two weeks to reply.
Italy will now have to present a new draft, the magazine
said.
Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini said, in a comment addressed at
Oettinger, that "we are convinced about the budget (bill), we
aren't going to change it. Stop it and let the Italian
government work for the Italians".
"Brussels shouldn't even dream of sending us the troika,"
Salvini added.
The other deputy premier, Luigi Di Maio, said Oettinger
"and all the European commissioners should start behaving like
serious people and bite their tongues three times before making
statements, as Signore Palomar did, in Calvino's tale, who if he
was still convinced at the third bite of the thing he was about
to say, he said it; otherwise he kept silent. In this way he
spent entire weeks and months in silence".
Premier Giuseppe Conte meanwhile went into talks with Angela
Merkel ahead of a two-day European Union summit hoping to
convince the German chancellor on an Italian budget that looks
virtually certain to be rejected by the EU because of its
deficit of 2.4% of GDP.
There is no room to change the 2019 budget bill, Conte said
ahead of the bilateral with Merkel.
Asked if there was a "margin" for change, he said "we have
studied it very well, so I should say there isn't".
The premier said "I will bring the message of a budget that
we have studied very well, it is a budget to reverse the trend,
we want to grow".
Asked about the likelihood of the 2019 budget changing if it
is rejected by the EU, Conte said Wednesday "I trust in
constructive dialogue, we will certainly get observations and we
will address them".
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