Brussels, 29/08/2012 (Agence Europe) - No “banking licence” for the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) under the current conditions and with the current treaties. Additionally, Italy has no intention of requesting aid from the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) in the immediate future and Germany, fully confident in the cleansing policy of its current government, is asking it for nothing of the kind, in the hope of being able to protect itself against any change in course on the part of the government born of the forthcoming elections in 2013. This is what arose from the press conference held by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and German Chancellor Angela Merkel after their meeting in Berlin on Wednesday 29 August. This meeting comes after the one held by Monti in Brussels yesterday (with no further information on the content) with the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso (see EUROPE 10676), and ahead of the one he will hold in Rome on 4 September with French President François Hollande, prior to an autumn which promises to be of decisive importance for the future of the eurozone.
In Berlin, the Italian Prime Minister hoped to put Italy back in the centre of the intensive diplomatic ballet underway and to defend the Community method, further to the announcement of the creation of a Franco-German working group tasked with drafting joint proposals on growth and on budgetary and monetary union in the eurozone, and a fortnight ahead of the verdict of the German Federal Court on the legality of the ESM, anticipated for 12 September. He also wished to stress to the Chancellor the need for measures to reduce the various levels of the borrowing rates (spread) across the eurozone, following the campaign of criticism in Germany regarding the ECB over its purchases of sovereign debt instruments. In an interview the day before with the daily newspaper Il Sole 24 0re, he explained that the high levels of spread penalised not just States such as Italy and their companies, which are forced to finance themselves at too high a cost, but that they also bring about a risk of inflation for countries which, like Germany, “appear to take advantage of them” temporarily. After the meeting, the two leaders expressed their confidence in the existing measures: “with the right measures, we will be able to stabilise the euro and make it stronger”, said Merkel, going on to confirm her opposition to the banking licence for the ESM, agreeing with Mario Draghi that this is “incompatible with the European treaties”. Mario Monti played down this view, arguing that “what is not possible at the moment might be, under different conditions”. (FG/transl.fl)