‘ARMAGEDDON!’ Salvini sidekick warns of global financial MELTDOWN if EU bullies Italy
FINANCIAL “armageddon” will result if the EU rejects Italy’s contentious budget plans and tries to bully Italy into austerity, a sidekick of Lega firebrand and interior minister Matteo Salvini has claimed.
By CIARAN MCGRATH
Express.co.uk
Fri, Oct 5, 2018
Claudio Borghi said the resultant chaos would be “a thousand times worse” than that seen after eurozone bosses adopted a similar approach towards Greece in 2010.
Meanwhile Mr Salvini himself has continued his recent war of words with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, accusing him of “ruining Europe”.
Mr Borghi, his party’s economics chief, made his remarks after a tense meeting between Italian president Sergio Mattarella and Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, which administrates the eurozone.
Italian media outlets have suggested the possibility of a ‘commissariamento’ which would effectively put Italy under EU economic control.
Spiralling national debts resulted in Greece being bailed out by the ECB to the tune of €289 billion, money which it will take the country decades to repay, and Greece is only now emerging from a period of sustained austerity.
But Mr Borghi said: “In Greece, the EU managed to turn what started as small problem into disaster through their own mismanagement, but this would be a thousand times worse. It would be Armageddon.
If anybody in Brussels is stupid enough to think they can use the ‘Greek textbook’ against us, they will find that the crisis is not Greece squared, but Greece cubed.”
The concern comes after Italy’s ruling coalition, consisting of Lega and Luigi Di Maio’s Five Star Movement (5SM) approved plans to run a budget deficit of 2.4 percent of GDP for the next three years, which would enable it to embark on a period of sustained public spending.
The 2.4 percent figure is below the EU’s deficit limit of 3 percent – but it still has Brussels worried, while Mr Draghi has reportedly said: “Italy will have no safety net.”
In theory the pro-Eu Mr Mattarella could use his constitutional powers for force Italy to toe the line – but Mr Borghi warned: “This is complete madness.
“They can’t do it unless they send in the army and you can’t do this to a lawful government with a majority in parliament that is doing nothing out of the normal.
“If they try, there will be a real revolution.”
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