Giorgetti: “A compromise on the Stability Pact, if it’s good we’ll evaluate it over time”

MILAN – “We cannot and must not celebrate the Stability Pact”. And again: “It’s a compromise, whether a compromise downwards or upwards, I said and I repeat that we will make the evaluations in some time.” Thus the Minister of Economy, Giancarlo Giorgettispeaking to the House Budget Committee on the Budget, after the approval received before Christmas in the Senate. Precisely on the immediate effects of the Stability Pact on the Italian accounts, Giorgetti ruled out a corrective measure: “What I can say is that the forecasts” of the government with the programmatic documents “are consistent with what is foreseen by the new Stability Pact, not additional maneuvers are planned.”

A commission that showed up in full force for the session on the budget law afterwards the thin figure in Montecitoriowith the deputy minister also present for the government Maurizio Leo and the undersecretaries Federico Freni And Lucia Albano.

Maneuver, the government is betting everything (in deficit) on payroll. From families to businesses, the measures envisaged

by Flavio Bini and Raffaele Ricciardi

December 22, 2023

On the Stability Pact

Giorgetti spoke about the EU rules on budgets, underlining “the psychedelic hallucination in which we have lived in the last four years” with the suspension of European constraints “thinking we can create debt and deficit”. For Giorgetti “we have become accustomed to this LSD that we have taken for four years and we must eliminate these measures point by point that we cannot afford”

On the Superbonus

Giorgetti again, on 110% for construction works: “The data of the last few months are worse than expected by Nadef, in terms of expenditure for public finances. A rule made in an exceptional moment has radioactive effects – he reiterated – that we cannot manage”. And then he added that “as Minister of Economy I know what the limits are beyond which we cannot go, and I will tell them to the Council of Ministers”, in reference to tomorrow’s meeting from which large parts of the majority – in particular Forza Italia – they expect an extension for condominium works.

On the Mes

On the Italy’s failure to ratify the ESM, Giorgetti explained that he had never made a commitment to its approval. But he also reconstructed that he had pushed for a vote – after four postponements – “out of seriousness”. And that in the end the outcome was what he had anticipated at the European level, where he had warned that a large part of the majority and the opposition would vote in the direction that later turned out to be Parliament’s choice. Giorgetti then added that the ESM “is neither the cause nor the solution to all our ills” which is rather “the public debt”. As for the consequences, there will be none given the high capitalization of Italian banks.

On the Maneuver

Giorgetti, who unlike the previous indications was open to responses on issues such as the ESM and the Stability Pact, had quickly opened his report by recalling the latest changes of the Senate noting that it has undertaken “a series of changes” which took “the spendability profile into account” and which led to “an improvement in all public finance balances”.

Among the questions posed to him, Giorgetti explained that on Bridge over the Strait of Messina “I don’t find it scandalous that the regions involved contribute to the work itself”, in reference to remodulation of the financing mechanism for the work with the transfer of part of the coverage from the national budget to that of the Development and Cohesion Fund assigned to local authorities.

On the general approach, the minister has claimed the “important effort to return disposable income to families, particularly those with low-medium incomes. I claim that the government – he reiterated – has also made the effort in extra deficit for employees with medium-low incomes, so that they can spend it in various ways, by their choice, and not waste important resources aimed at one-way bonuses and not necessarily for the benefit of those with medium-low incomes”.