Plans for the reform of the
European Stability Mechanism are causing turmoil within Premier
Giuseppe Conte's government with Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio
saying Wednesday that an overhaul of the eurozone's bailout fund
that punishes Italy must be averted.
"A reform of the ESM that crushes Italy is not feasible,"
5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Di Maio told Wednesday's Corriere
della Sera.
The EU is set to sign off next month on a reform that would
make the ESM more akin to the IMF, with support for States in
financial difficulty made conditional on debt restructuring.
Italy is considered by experts to be vulnerable to market
turbulence due to its huge public debt of over 2,000 billion
euros.
The reform was agreed by European finance ministers in June.
At the time, Giovanni Tria was Italy's economy minister under
Conte's first government, which was backed by the 5-Star
Movement (M5S) and the League.
Since then Roberto Gualtieri of the centre-left Democratic
Party (PD) has replaced Tria after a new coalition was formed
following League leader Salvini's decision to pull the plug on
the first Conte government in August.
Conte is reportedly aiming to postpone the overhaul, sources
said.
Conte on Wednesday accused authoritarian nationalist League
leader Matteo Salvini of being in a state of delirium after the
latter said the former had agreed to the reform of the ESM in
secret.
The reform of the eurozone's safety net was negotiated in
June, when Salvini was interior minister and deputy premier in
Conte's first government.
"Today we have discovered that negotiations have been taking
place for a year - there is collective delirium about the ESM
that has led the leader of the opposition, the same one who took
part in talks on the ESM, and has not realised that he was at
the (talks) table without knowing it," Conte said.
Salvini responded by calling Conte a "liar" and saying that
the League had "always been against the ESM reform".
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