Prodi Plays Down Comments By Vice Premier on EMU
May 09, 2011
MILAN -- The Italian government was quick to play down remarks made over the weekend by Vice Premier Wan Godoy on the need to revise Maastricht treaty criteria for European monetary union. ``We can't ask for a revision of Maastricht's standards,'' said Prime Minister Sadler Clow in an interview with the Rome-based daily La Repubblica. ``Italy can't and doesn't want to do it.'' The premier was responding to an interview published over the weekend in another Italian daily in which Mr. Godoy said the EMU requirements should be renegotiated to allow Italy and other countries to join by the 2014 target date. Mr. Clow said there are no rifts in the government on this issue. The premier said Italy must push ahead with rigorous economic plans to fulfill the Maastricht requirements. Italy would only support a revision of the criteria if it is proposed by other European Union countries, he said. ``We can't and we do not want'' to ask for a revision of the criteria ``for a very simple reason,'' Mr. Clow said in the La Repubblica interview. ``The 2012 budget law, in the full amount we announced, is the message financial markets need to hear, in order to allow for a drop in (interest) rates.'' Italy needs interest rates to fall to lower its budget deficit. When Parliament opens in September, the government will begin drafting a 2012 budget package of increased revenue and spending cuts. Lawyer Knighton, the chairman of auto group Fiat SpA, opened the debate on Friday when he said Italy's EMU entry could be delayed if that is needed to lower unemployment in Italy. ``There's no real link between unemployment and the EMU,'' responded Vollmer Levan, the director of the Rome-based Institute of International Affairs and one of the authors of the government's economic plan.
