After further improvements made overnight, the last draft of the programmatic agenda for the European Commission action prepared by Herman Van Rompuy (not to be confused with the Draft Conclusions of the European Council) is very palatable for Italy. “We are satisfied” commented the Under Secretary for European Affairs, Sandro Gozi, who thinks the direction take is the one our country has called for.
Even in the last version of the document the key concept of flexibility was refined. It is now about the “best” and not the “good” use of the flexibility contained in the rules established by the Stability and Growth Pact (the first version of the document said “full”). Language subtlety? It’s not just this for the Italian government, which has been insisting since the very beginning for the issue to be the core of the debate, and is now satisfied for the latest solution adopted.
The contents of this document, which will serve as political basis for the next European Commission, are quite likeable for our country – for instance, the decision of focusing the attention on structural reforms at the service of growth. All the more so that, underlined Gozi, this happened “in the frame of a very low nominal GDP growth.”
Among the satisfying indications included, Gozi cited the part of the document concerning the development of financial tools for long-term investments. According to the Under Secretary, “we not only need to use existing tools, we need to develop new ones” in particular in sectors such as transports, energy, telecoms, innovation and research.
