Italian Government submits budgetary plan by midnight deadline after agreement between coalition is reached on Monday
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Italy’s coalition government has approved budget plans for next year that will lower the retirement age and allow for a partial amnesty on unpaid taxes.
Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Monday evening Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, said the government would send the draft of its budget to the European Commission as planned before the midnight deadline on Monday.
The submission of the draft to the European Commission for review is expected to be the first step in potentially fraught negotiations with Brussels over the coalition’s plan to ramp up spending.
As well as sharply widening the budget deficit to 2.4 per cent of gross domestic product — a level far in excess of a previously EU-mandated target of 0.8 per cent in 2019 — the budget will lower the retirement age and introduce payments to poor Italians starting from next year.
Matteo Salvini, leader of the hard-right League party, which shares power with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, said the budget plans would “open up job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young people”. “After 137 days of government we have to be satisfied with what we have done.”
