Rome badly needs to ratify ESM reform - Gramegna

(ANSA) - ROME, OCT 13 - Rome "badly needs" to ratify the reform of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Managing Director Pierre Gramegna said on Friday.
    "We are waiting for Italy to proceed with the ratification of the ESM, we are working hard to convince it to do so," Gramegna told Cnbc.
    !Italy is a sovereign country, but it has committed itself to doing it, and we need it badly," he added. Italy is the only eurozone country holding out on ratification of the new EU bailout mechanism amid concerns about its impact on budget sovereignty and claims the fund should also be used to boost growth.
    "It's really difficult to understand the motivation or the financial logic of the non-ratification, I think it's a political battle," continued Gramegna.
    Ratification "is in the interest of Italy and of the 20 countries" in the eurozone, he concluded.
    Earlier this month Premier Giorgia Meloni reiterated that it is useless to discuss the reform the ESM without knowing the framework around it, amid ongoing broader discussions on the revision of the rules of Europe's Stability and Growth Pact on fiscal discipline.
    "The government's position is still the same, I have not changed my mind on the subject of the ESM, but regardless of what one thinks about the merits of the instrument, I think that those who are proposing to open this debate today are not doing Italy a favour in any case, whether one is for or against it," she said at an event marking Sky's 20 years in Italy.
    "Banally, because there is no point in discussing an instrument if you do not know what the framework is within which that instrument fits," she said. (ANSA).