"Italy has not asked for loans so far, it has given many and every day that passes, in fact, it is subsidizing others with the high interest rates it pays in the market". These are the words of Prime Minister Mario Monti in an interview given to a series of European newspapers, including La Stampa.
"In the future, Italy will not need aid – continues the Professor – and if he were to ask, it means that there is something wrong with the system. He won't ask them because this year, according to the European Commission's spring forecast, Italy has a public deficit of 2% of gross domestic product: the EU as a whole is at 3,6%, the euro area is at 3,2%, the Netherlands at 4,4%, France at 4,5%, while Germany at only 0,9%”.
Furthermore, Monti underlines again, “Italy will have a structural surplus of 2013% in 0,6 and will be one of the first countries to have it. There is something imperfect in the eurozone if a country that is making enormous efforts internally still has such high interest rates”.
Precisely for this reason the Premier has proposed to Europe of allow state-saving funds (first the EFSF, then, when it is operational, the ESM) the purchase on the secondary market of bonds from virtuous countries under speculative attack (read: Italy and Spain), in order to control the spreads. The idea will be at the center of the four-party summit scheduled for today in Rome: in addition to Monti, French President François Hollande and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy will put pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to soften her line of intransigent rigour.
Monti, addressing a hypothetical German citizen, would say: "Dear Herr Muller, first of all relax, because you have convinced yourself or they have convinced you that you are maintaining an excessive standard of living for Italians. Look, it's not like that, because there hasn't been any funding to Italy. I can't ask you to believe that the Germans are benefiting from the fact that Germany is able to finance itself at such low rates, even as a mirror effect of the high rates of the others. And I would say to him again: dear Herr Muller, convince yourself of what the Chancellor of your country has been saying for some time and that is that Germany benefits greatly, like all countries, from European integration".
The real answers, however, will have to come from European Council next week. Otherwise, says Monti, "there would be a fierce speculation also towards less weak countries, such as Italy, which are in line with European parameters but which carry a high debt of the past".
