Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Friday that there was no rift between Rome and Berlin over European fiscal policy and that Germany’s central bank should not comment on Italian government policies.
“I haven’t seen any polemic with German politicians,” Renzi said at a news conference to launch Italy’s 6-month presidency of the European Union, when asked to comment on reports of a rift with Germany over the scope for budget flexibility.
“If you are referring to the comments of some German banker,” Renzi continued, “the Bundesbank’s job is to ensure respect of its statutes, not to participate in Italy’s political debate.”
He added that “Europe belongs to its citizens, not to bankers, either Italian ones or German ones.”
On Thursday Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann said Italy should complete structural reforms before calling for increased budget flexibility.
Renzi, speaking at a joint news conference with outgoing European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, said he had an “excellent” relationship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and he had “very much appreciated” comments by her spokesman earlier on Friday.
Italy, which is pushing for greater flexibility in European budget rules to allow it to spend more, has the second-highest public debt in the euro zone as a proportion of national output, after Greece.
via Reuters
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Alfonso Esparza
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
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