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EU: Top budget job offered to rule-breaking Italy

Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni was nominated on Tuesday for the key role of European Commissioner for Economic Affairs, where he will oversee public spending in member states, most notably in Italy.

Published: 10 September 2019 15:20 CEST

EU: Top budget job offered to rule-breaking Italy

Former Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni.Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The choice of Gentiloni was a surprise move by Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming head of the European Commission, who named her new team of top officials from a list of nominees proposed by all EU member states apart from Britain.

Gentiloni will take over from Pierre Moscovici, a former French finance minister who spent most his five-years as commissioner in battle with Italy over its colossal debt and chronic overspending.

Pierre Moscovici. Photo: AFP

The EU has strict rules on public spending, with countries expected to deliver national budgets with deficits that do not exceed three percent of GDP with debt not over 60 percent.

Italy's public debt currently stands at a daunting 132 percent of GDP and the new government in Rome will struggle to meet belt-tightening commitments already made to Brussels, potentially leaving Gentiloni in the delicate role of enforcing rules against his own country.

READ ALSO: Four key economic challenges facing Italy's new government

Rome's new government, which brings together the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party, has indicated that it wants to pursue an “expansive” economic policy, but “without jeopardising” sound public finances.

Plans tabled by Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte include a demand to reform the EU budget rules, a gambit that will face fierce pushback by Germany and the Netherlands that cherish balanced budgets across Europe.

In introducing her new team on Tuesday, von der Leyen described Gentiloni as “very experienced”.

“He knows the difficult issues we face,” she added.

According to her organisational plans, Gentiloni will be overseen by Valdis Dombrovskis, a former Latvian prime minister who returns to the commission as Executive Vice President over economic affairs.

The politically right-of-centre Dombrovskis held a similar role in the last commission and was often tussling behind the scenes with Moscovici.

READ ALSO: Italy's prime minister calls for reform of EU spending rules

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Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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