Never said Italy would ratify ESM says Giorgetti

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 27 - Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti on Wednesday denied saying that Italy would ratify the reformed European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the EU's bailout fund that the Italian parliament refused to back, alone among EU members, on budgetary sovereignty and lack of growth booster concerns.
    Giorgetti had indicated after the rejection of the new ESM that he personally would have backed it but that "there was not the right atmosphere to do so".
    On Wednesday he told the House panel: "first of all I have never said either in Parliament, or in Europe, or anywhere else that Italy would ratify the ESM. I have read absurd things, absolutely false, and I beg you to take note of it.
    "The sovereign Parliament voted and voted as I had anticipated in the European forum where I had always said" that a large part of Parliament was against it and "the outcome would inevitably have been this," he added.
    Giorgetti said he had warned Brussels that this would be the outcome. (ANSA).