Brussels, 12/01/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 12 December, Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti addressed the Italian parliament and reported back on the progress he has made in his meetings with President Sarkozy and Chancellor Merkel (see EUROPE 10526 and 10529). In addition to establishing budgetary discipline, Europe should also work more proactively towards relaunching growth, particularly at a time when there is a risk of recession in the EU, he said.
The head of the Italian government said that Italy should play an active role in helping Europe get back on track towards stability and growth. He also said that the country was keen on respecting its budgetary discipline in an effort to avoid introducing more rigid criteria or sanctions at a later date. Nonetheless, he did say that “Europe should not just restrict itself to budgetary discipline (…) Without forgetting this aspect of discipline, it is very important to go beyond this and invest much more constructive energy in growth”, which is itself “a necessary and indispensable condition” to budgetary discipline. Monti said that although the objective is to put the Union on a more solid economic footing “it is necessary to introduce balance, together with measures for promoting growth and competitiveness through economic integration”. He called for an effort to be made to help realise the potential of a continent that is genuinely integrated and which can grow further. The Italian prime minister added that “this has not yet been done either by the European institutions or the major EU member states”.
Monti said that he was keen for the EU to rapidly reach an agreement on the rules of the new budgetary pact, which included the “golden rule” in the constitutions of countries that are party to it (until now all the different member states except for the United Kingdom). In a reference to the continued refusal by the ECB to apply large scale measures for purchasing sovereign debt in eurozone countries experiencing difficulty, he said: “I am not ruling out that the European Central Bank, whose action is obviously completely autonomous, should feel more relaxed.”
In his speech to MEPs, he mentioned the next national level meetings that will take place before the European meetings (Eurogroup 23 January, Ecofin 24 January, and the European summit planned “for technical reasons” on 29 January): in Rome over the next few days with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk; in London on 18 January to act as mediators with British Prime Minister David Cameron, before another meeting on 20 January with Chancellor Merkel and President Sarkozy. (FG/transl.fl)