Conte and Tria from Junker to leave the door open with Brussels

The government's goal is to bring the debt infringement procedure beyond the European elections scheduled for May 2019. Today the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the Minister of Economy and Finance Giovanni Tria are with the President of the EU Commission Jean Claude Juncker with the task of leaving the door open with Brussels. The hope is to keep calm the Eurogroup which, fearful of the European sovereign wave, could ask Italy for a quick time for a corrective maneuver, or the start of the infringement procedure with the payment of 3,5 billion euros as storage area.

The Italian willingness to continue to dialogue with Brussels has, however, kept the markets calm for now, but they are anxiously awaiting the probability of an eventual agreement. It is certain that the yellow-green government could make some changes but it is absolutely not ready to change the numbers of the maneuver: 2,4% deficit-GDP ratio, 0,8% more debt and an estimated 5% growth .

Rewriting the maneuver means blowing the balance of government because Di Maio does not want to cut the citizen's income and Salvini does not want to give up the cancellation of the Fornero law. A policy, however, that does not like the majority of the electorate of the League (VAT numbers and production sector) who do not look favorably on citizenship income and fear of having to pay the sanctions of Brussels and the consequent isolation in Europe. So tonight at a working dinner in the Berlaymont Building, headquarters of the European Commission, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte will bring a 40-page dossier with him. The president of the commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, should be joined by his deputy, Valdis Dombrovskis, and by the commissioner for economic affairs, Pierre Moscovici. Conte's request to Juncker is that in any case Italy be granted six months. And it is precisely by playing on this time extension that the 3,5 billion and a half billion sanction could be triggered, if it occurs, towards the end of next year. At that point, writes the Corriere della Sera, the composition of Parliament and the Commission will have been changed by the vote in May, even if the polls say that the populist wing will still remain a minority. But the premier will insist on another topic. He will underline that the budget law presented in Parliament allocates 15 billion euros for investments in the next three years, which are added to the 6 billion of last year's budget, not yet used. It will illustrate a plan to unblock infrastructures, with a new simplification package that could enter as an amendment in the budget law under discussion in Parliament. Not only. Because it will reaffirm its commitment to bring the public debt down to 126% of the Pii in the next three years, thanks to privatizations. The Minister of Economy Tria would also like to play the card of the real deficit lower than that written in the official documents. To understand: if the citizenship income and the 100 share for pensions were to start in May, their cost in 2019 would be lower and this would lower the deficit / Pii ratio compared to the 2,4% indicated in the maneuver.

Conte and Tria from Junker to leave the door open with Brussels

| EVIDENCE 1, ITALY |