Italy Gets Tough With The Eu.

[anotheoldgit]

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1136488/EU-news-Italy-budget-European-Commission-Matteo-Salvini-League-Five-Star-Movement

[spathiphyllum]

Surely Rome (Italy) can't afford that?

[agchristie]

The Italians may be in for a rough ride.

Good luck to their negotiations with EU chiefs. They will need it.

[shoota]

Cue Italexit.

[naomi24]

The EU negotiate? A joke surely.

[agchristie]

Naomi, yes, the EU has form where intransigence is concerned :-(

[jno]

unions are supposed to be intransigent. The Americans went to war to preserve the union.

[Gromit]

// Italy Gets Tough With The EU. //

Actually it is the other way round, the EU is getting tough with italy. According to EU rules, no country should have a budget deficit larger than three percent of GDP or debt above 60 percent of GDP, but Italy's public debt was 132.2 percent of GDP in 2018, and it is forecast to rise to 135 percent.
The EU has to enforce the rules or else EVERYONE will ignore them. Apparently the League and Five Star support EU membership, but don’t want to obey the rules of membership. So the EU intends to fine them.

[Gromit]

// The EU negotiate? A joke surely. //

There will be no negotiating. Italy agreed to the EU rules when it joined. They are now breaking the rules so they will be punished. The EU are never going let a lone country have double the debt permitted and just let them off.

[ToraToraTora]

this is EUSSR showing their true bullying colours...and people still want to stay in? Unbelievable.

[Deskdiary]

I don't pretend to even remotely understand the EU's budget rules, but if Italy is struggling with debt and as a country they're spending a third more than they earn, how is fining them billions of Euros helpful?

[anotheoldgit]

This from January this year.

The pro-Brexit Tory MP Bernard Jenkin said:

“Right-wing populism makes the European Union like a very fragile political project with very tender and vulnerable credibility with populations in other European countries. ///

/// “Happily we haven’t got a right-wing party in the UK because our parliamentary system absorbs those political and economic shocks.” ///

Pardon me Mr Jenkin, isn't your own party right-wing, or is that a myth that the gullible British voters have been lead into believing?

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1077142/EU-news-Italy-Brussels-eurozone-crisis-Brexit-news-Bernard-Jenkin

[youngmafbog]

Surprisingly I agree with Gromit. The wee lady should take note though before dragging Scotland into this mire.

[ToraToraTora]

good point YMB, is the unlikely event they let Scotland in can you imagine the pre conditions? Be careful what you wish for wee Jimmy!

[jno]

right-wing populists in Italy and elsewhere have no wish to leave the EU: they've seen the chaos it would cause.

[webbo3]

italy's debt clock.

https://commodity.com/debt-clock/italy/