Brussels, 24/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 24 June, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi presented the members of the national parliaments with the political priorities of Italy, which is getting ready to take over the reins of the Council of the EU, on 1 July.
“So far, we have entrusted the currency with the duty of building Europe, but this reasoning is incomplete. It is not enough just to have the single currency in order to share a destiny”, said Renzi (our translation throughout). Criticising the “conservatives who do not wish to change anything about the EU”, he said that the “economic and financial policy of recent years has undeniably sheltered the euro from difficult situations, but it has not allowed the European Union to grow and become stronger”.
The former mayor of Florence reiterated Italy's position, which is that the first priority of European action should be to mobilise all possible energy to boost economic growth and create jobs, because “not all of Italy has come out of crisis” (see EUROPE 11105). “Either Europe changes direction, or there will be no chance of boosting growth and development”, he stressed, adding that his country did not seek to flout the European budgetary rules. As well as the importance to employment of getting production back up and running, increased growth would make it easier for the highly indebted countries, such as Italy, to meet their deleveraging commitments.
The European Commission predicts a return of growth in Italy in 2014 (+0.6% of GDP, compared to -1.9% in 2013), and unemployment and public debt culminating at 12.8% of the active population and 135.2% of GDP respectively. With its public deficit under control (2.6% of GDP), Italy is no longer under an excessive deficit procedure.
At a summit in Paris in Saturday and the day before on the sidelines of the Ecofin Council, several Social Democrat leaders played down reports that their political family wishes to modify the stability pact, either to change the rules for calculating public deficit by excluding certain investment expenditure, or to give the countries carrying out reforms more time to meet their budgetary commitments (see EUROPE 11105 and 11106). Instead, they would rather make full use of all of the existing margin of the pact. This request serves as a condition for the European Social Democrats' support of the candidacy of the Luxembourg Christian Democrat Jean-Claude Juncker to lead the future European Commission.
The Italian prime minister said that the results of the recent European elections should be taken as a “wake-up call”, as Europeans stayed away in their droves or voted in parties which are openly “hostile” to the policies pursued at the moment. “Anybody who thinks that simply choosing Jean-Claude Juncker would plug the democratic gap is not on this planet”, he said.
It is worth noting that the youth employment summit, which was initially scheduled to be held in early July, has been postponed until the end of the year, to allow sufficient time for an initial assessment of the implementation of the Youth Guarantee (see EUROPE 11057). (MB)