In the last available afternoon the EU managed to reach agreement on the new Stability Pact . The agreement arrived in an unusual extraordinary Ecofin meeting convened via video call by the Spanish presidency. Italy, highly critical until a few hours earlier, confirmed what was hoped for by France and Germany : the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti, in the name of the "spirit of compromise", said he agreed.
Rome's step effectively closed the meeting and the new Stability Pact was therefore approved unanimously. « A common sense compromise has been found, the Pact is an improvement compared to the past », underlined Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni , not failing to regret Europe's "no" to the golden rule on investments. «Good news for the European economy», declared the EU Commissioner for Economic Affairs Paolo Gentiloni.
The new stability pact, the result of the latest Franco-German award born at the Paris dinner, is much more complex than the old one and responds to a series of inputs: on the one hand maintaining rigid fiscal sustainability, as requested by Berlin; on the other hand, that of not drowning growth by taking into account investments and debt interest , in particular in a three-year transitional period, from 2025 to 2027.
The structural reduction path of the deficit - that is, the path to get below the 3% ceiling - for countries like Italy has a fixed parameter, 0.5% per year. But the speed of the correction can change: a government, this is the latest news, can ask the Commission, if it wants, to agree on a technical trajectory that does not block investments and takes into account the increase in interest, according to a very similar to the one used by the European executive with the Pnrr.
Berlin, for its part, has obtained a key piece of data: the so-called safety anchor which obliges countries that have already fallen below the 3% threshold to reach 1.5% of the deficit/GDP in order to have an anti-crisis buffer . But, even in this case, for countries with debt exceeding 90% of GDP there is an exit strategy: reduce the deficit by 0.25% per year over a total of seven years instead of 0.4% over a total of 4 years. Paris, Madrid and Berlin rejoiced in unison for an agreement celebrated as "historic" on new tax rules defined as "realistic, balanced and adequate for the challenges of the present and the future".
It's Italy? As Gentiloni put it, it was "decisive" . Yes, because Giorgetti found himself at a crossroads: to embrace the cause of compromise or to get in the way, alone among the 27 and after very strong pressure put in place by France, Germany and Brussels itself. The minister spoke of a «Sustainable Pact», which «contains some positive things and some less so» and which has «more realistic rules than the current ones» .
Protests from the opposition. Giuseppe Conte speaks of a "stability package" which will translate into a "noose around the country's neck". «Rigid constraints, potentially pro-cyclical accounting parameters, a new season of austerity are returning. All this when that paradigm shift triggered by us in 2020, with the introduction of the Pnrr based on a historic Eurobond issue, had to be defended tooth and nail", continues the M5s leader, underlining how the first to rejoice were, "not by chance", Holland and Germany. «Our sovereignists – the gloss – put on a ferocious face at party parties, but become incredibly docile at the top where the destinies of Italians are written» .
Elly Schlein speaks of a "bad compromise" that "puts a great risk on the future" . Italy, he underlines, «was absent in the negotiations, it accepted the agreement of France and Germany with its head down. We should have fought harder. If we go back to rigid quantitative parameters it is as if we have learned nothing from the pandemic."
(Unioneonline/L)
