Renzi: from Brussels I expect investments to be excluded by deficit accounting, a Commissioner is less urgent

The Italian Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi, is obsessed about one thing: the European Union has to let Italy exclude expenses for investments (and for several other things) from the procedure of accounting public debt: the ‘infamous’ 3 percent debt-to-GDP ratio. This point is so important that a possible ‘crucial’ Commissioner could be sacrificed on its altar.

That is what emerged during “Ottoemezzo”, presented by Lilli Gruber on the Italian TV broadcaster La7. Asked about the possible Commissioner Italy would get, Renzi diverted his answer immediately and said “it is clear that the issue is not which kind of Commissioner you get, but what you want the forthcoming Commission to do.” Urged by Gruber and Stefano Feltri about his favourite ‘portfolio’, Renzi went on talking about the same topic: “I would like to have a President of the Commission telling me I the money of the Stability Pact do not include money invested in schools, energy, ICT, investments in infrastructures. I am keen on saying this stuff is out of the stability pact.”

This deal made, explained the Prime Minister, “if we get Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs will do, it is an important role for Italy. Yet Italy is not urging anyone to get Foreign Affairs, or Internal Market, or Agriculture…” When journalists objected that different Commissioners have very different European ‘weight’, he said, guess what? “No, it is crucial for Italy to spend the money from the Stability Pact.”

Journalists went on, and Renzi went on as well, and when asked “whether, in view of national interests, it is more strategic to be Commissioner for Foreign Affairs or, let’s say, Industry, as we did with Tajani, or Trade…” Renzi answered “There is a very simple reply: if you say so you are denying the reasons of the European Commission. National interest (that is European interest, by the way) is that it should be possible to pass from policies based on austerities to policies based on growth.”