Tensions are rising again between Brussels and Rome. “Italy won't stop attacking the European Commission wrongly and this will not produce the expected results – said the president of the EU executive yesterday, Jean-Claude Juncker –. Italy can no longer say, and if she wants to say it, she can do it but I really don't care, that the austerity policies have been carried out by this Commission as they have been carried out before". The reference is to the Italian requests for flexibility on accounts.
In particular, Juncker stressed that the "additional" costs for migrants and the earthquake are worth 0,1% of GDP and that Italy promised to have a 1,7% deficit in 2017, while now proposing one of 2,4%. A Commission spokesman later intervened, arguing that when Juncker quantified the figures of the additional Italian expenses for migrants and the earthquake “he improvised” and “subsequently he corrected himself”.
The Italian Premier's reply was not long in coming: “Juncker says I'm making a controversy – he said Renzi in Frosinone -. We don't argue, we don't look anyone in the face. Because it is one thing to respect the rules, it is quite another that these rules can go against the stability of our children's schools. Investments for the future can be discussed, but there is no possibility of blocking us on school construction: us we put that money out of the Stability Pact whether Brussels officials want it or not".
The commissioner for economic affairs tried to placate his tone, Pierre Moscovici: "There is an abundance of statements to which the president wanted to respond in his own way, the same way we know that it is a direct way to respond to equally direct and impolite statements to express himself about the Commission".
But this, explains Moscovici, "concerns the form". What matters instead is the content, and on that "let's discuss with the Italian Government in a positive spirit”. And the Commission “is not rigid or inattentive. We have given a lot to Italy, Juncker reminded us, there are 19 billion this year. The Commission is largely on the side of Italy and we are available to take into consideration migrant expenses, as also recognized by the European Council, and those for the earthquake, in the short and medium term”.
