By Giuseppe Fonte<\/p>\n
ROME, April 27 (Reuters) – Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called on Monday for the European Commission to grant member states the same \u200cbudget leeway to ease surging energy costs as is currently allowed for \u200cdefence spending.<\/p>\n
The move would potentially allow Italy to fund costly aid measures for firms and families worth \u200balmost 35 billion euros ($41.13 billion).<\/p>\n
Italy pledged this month to reduce its budget deficit to 2.9% of GDP in 2026, just inside the EU’s 3% ceiling, from 3.1% last year, despite a darkening economic outlook due to the impact of the U.S.-Israeli conflict with \u200cIran.<\/p>\n
However, both Prime Minister Giorgia \u2060Meloni and Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti said the government could renegotiate the deficit goals with European Union authorities at a later stage \u2060to respond to the energy crisis.<\/p>\n
“Just as the EU has done with defence spending, the same can be done with energy spending,” Tajani told reporters in Pistoia, central Italy.<\/p>\n
Under a \u200bso-called ‘national \u200bescape clause’ (NEC), the European Union allows countries to \u200bexceed the bloc’s deficit limits \u200ceither to increase their defence spending, or to tackle exceptionally averse economic circumstances.<\/p>\n
In the case of defence spending, the budget flexibility would be available for four years starting from 2025, with an increase in the deficit through 2028 that must not exceed 1.5% of national output per year.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen what response Brussels will \u200cgive to Tajani’s call for the same 1.5%-of-GDP \u200bleeway to be extended to energy-related spending.<\/p>\n
In response \u200bto the turmoil in the Middle \u200bEast, Italy has spent around 1 billion euros to cut excise \u200cduties on fuels until May 1, \u200bbut prices to consumers \u200bhave changed little.<\/p>\n
“These are emergency measures, short-term measures, rather than long-term ones that permanently increase Italy’s debt,” Tajani said.<\/p>\n
Italy is already set to replace Greece as \u200bthe euro zone’s most \u200cindebted country, with a debt-to-GDP ratio is by the government to peak \u200bat 138.6% of GDP by end-December, from 137.1% in 2025.<\/p>\n
($1 = 0.8511 euros)<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Giuseppe Fonte, editing by Gavin Jones)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Giuseppe Fonte ROME, April 27 (Reuters) – Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani called on Monday for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":921880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[12345,12332,258502,31610,2000,299,5187,2557,1699,2199],"class_list":["post-921879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-antonio-tajani","tag-budget-deficit","tag-central-italy","tag-defence-spending","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-commission","tag-european-union","tag-italy"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116476855504188134","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=921879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/921879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/921880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=921879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=921879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=921879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}