The Meloni government does not back down and insists on the request for greater flexibility towards the European Union. The Minister of Economy and Finance Giancarlo Giorgetti reiterates the need for greater space for economic security with a clear reference to the uncertainty linked to energy price increases due to tensions in the Middle East.
“Rational and common sense proposal”
“Our proposal is to interpret the spaces granted for defense in terms of national security”, said the head of the MEF in Nicosia, on the sidelines of the informal Ecofin. According to the minister, it is a “rational and common sense” initiative, even if the evaluation times “are not immediate”. According to Giorgetti it could take “a few days” or a few weeks. “One of my mantras is that economic security is national security. We believe that what is happening in the Middle East is comparable, in economic terms and consequences, to what happened with Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”
The Commission takes stock of the state of the Union’s economy
“There is no solution that helps Italy”, explained Giorgetti after meeting bilaterally with Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis. “There are solutions that help all the countries that are part of Europe, in a very complicated and difficult situation. We have made a proposal. We believe that this proposal is absolutely rational and common sense”. The minister then joked about the ongoing discussions with the community institutions, explaining how he is talking more with Dombrovskis “more than with Crosetto”. And to those who asked him if he saw him coming closer to Italian requests, he replied: “Let’s say he has the pace of the Latvian Alpine troops”.
Meloni’s appeal
In recent days, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had sent a letter to the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen: a writing in which the Italian government asked to temporarily extend the exceptions to the Stability Pact already foreseen for military spending also to the interventions necessary to deal with the energy emergency.
According to Meloni, the international context – marked by tensions in the Middle East, the risks linked to the Strait of Hormuz and the still present consequences of the war in Ukraine – is already producing effects on energy prices and the costs incurred by European families and businesses. “Italy will continue to do its part to strengthen European security and defense”, the Prime Minister wrote, underlining how Rome has long supported the need to increase European investments in strategic security. However, he adds, today there would be “another equally concrete and immediate emergency: the energy emergency”.
