On Friday 21 October, Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi highlighted the efforts his country has made to take its responsibilities in Europe whilst complying with the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact.
The government deficit forecast for 2017 is the "lowest since 2007" and the "second lowest in 15 years", after the one put forward by the 'Prodi II' government in 2007, he said.
The draft Italian budget for next year, which was announced on Saturday 15 October, forecasts a deficit of 2.3%, which is below the threshold of 3% of GDP laid down in the Stability Pact, but above the prior commitments taken to bring the deficit down to around 2%. Growth forecasts have been trimmed, to 1% of GDP in 2017, following a level of 0.8% in 2016. Government debt, the highest in absolute values in the eurozone, will peak at a level close to 133% of GDP.
Renzi, who has no intention of making any changes to the draft budget submitted to the European Commission, stressed the difficulty of the exercise facing the Italian state, which consists of taking action to breathe new life into economic activity, by such means as investments, and of complying with the European budgetary rules, against the backdrop of a continuous influx of migrants from Libya and the reconstruction efforts made necessary by the third earthquake to hit Italy in seven years.
Rejecting the possibility that Italy will benefit less from the flexibility margins of the Stability Pact for the investment, security and migrant hosting expenditure, Renzi, whose political future is tightly bound up with the results of the December referendum on a planned constitutional revision, does not believe that his country will come in for sanctions from the European level. He has always vehemently dismissed the possibility of fining Spain and Portugal for not doing enough to comply with the Stability Pact. "Like it or not, if there is an infringement procedure to be launched, it should be launched against the countries not complying with the decision on the relocation" of the refugees, he said. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)