Italy urged to respect EU spending rules

Finance ministers from the eurozone’s largest economies have urged Italy’s populist government to respect the bloc’s spending rules, as they pushed Rome for clarity on its plans to tear up a previous budget agreement with Brussels. FT/ANSA

Eurozone finance ministers on Monday met for the first time since Italy’s populist coalition last week presented a spending plan that would inflate Italy’s budget deficit to an estimated 2.4 per cent over the next three years.

The forecast is three times above Brussels target of 0.8 per cent for 2019 and higher than the 1.6 per cent that Giovanni Tria, the country’s finance minister, had previously promised.  Bruno Le Maire, France’s economy minister, and Wopke Hoekstra, Dutch finance minister, requested an update from Mr Tria, who in turn sought to reassure his colleagues his government was committed to bringing down public debt, according to diplomats attending the meeting on Monday.

“There are rules and rules are the same for every state”, Mr Le Maire told reporters ahead of the talks in Luxembourg. “The future of Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, all the members of the eurozone are linked”.

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