Brussels, 22/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - The President of the Italian Council of Ministers, Matteo Renzi, has described the way the European Commission assesses the economic performances of the various states of the EU as “double standards”. In an interview published on 22 December by the Financial Times, he pointed out that Germany had a trade surplus of 8%, “and the rules say it should be 6% at most”.
In November, the Commission announced that Germany, along with 17 other member states, would be the subject of a new in-depth report to determine whether its excessive imbalances are improving, persisting or getting worse (see EUROPE 11439). In April 2014, a study by five economists, requested by the Commission, concluded that the German trade surplus has a limited impact on the eurozone economy (see EUROPE 11059). For its part, the Commission takes the view that the existence of a macro-economic imbalance is more likely to be due to poor German internal consumption than to the trade surplus.
When examining the draft national budgets, although the Commission acknowledged that Italy is potentially the only country which is able to benefit from all of the flexibility laid down in the Pact, it has decided to reserve its answer to the Italian requests to make use of this flexibility until spring 2016. “We didn't ask for anything more than what we could have asked for. Actually we asked for a bit less. Our debt will fall next year and our deficit is under 2.5%”, Renzi told the Financial Times.
The Italian Prime Minister also briefly commented on the bailout of three Italian banks, in the framework of which 130,000 shareholders and more than 10,000 subordinated bond-holders were called upon to make a contribution. The matter was the subject of considerable outcry following the suicide of a pensioner who was affected.
“The reality is there were EU rules and we had to respect them. We had a letter from Commissioners Hill (Financial Services: Ed) and Vestager (Competition: Ed) telling us what we could do and what we couldn't do”, Renzi explained. (Elodie Lamer)