EU madness: calls for debt reduction but wants us to raise military spending
The “tin bota”, pronounced in appreciable Italian by Ursula Von Der Leyen, is heartening. But, as often happens, words are not followed by deeds. And Italy will have to spend a lot of money. How many? Between 2 and 3% of GDP will have to be valued to respect the newly reintroduced debt-to-GDP parameters or for the NATO quota, to which must be added military expenditure for Ukraine. With the Pnrr the EU gives us (debt with interest, always good to remember) money that we can use, assuming we know how to play by the rules. On the other hand the EU will take, as a matter of fact, our money. Let’s make the point.
In 2020, due to a pandemic that blocked the economy, the European Union, through the voice of Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, declared suspended the stability pact that had given so many stomach aches to the most “naughty” states, like us Italians. The new European order was “spend what you can, to keep and support your citizens in this hard time”. Every European state did its utmost to launch projects to support individual citizens and businesses. From Italy to Germany, money was wasted (in some cases literally) to keep citizens quietin a moment of understandable concern.
At the beginning of 2022 Paolo Gentiloni began to mention an imminent reactivation of the stability pact. In her speech to the Union in September 2022, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen made it clear that the stability pact would soon return. In a document dated April 2023, the EU clarifies that “for each member state with a deficit over 3% of GDP, or a public debt over 60%, the Commission will define technical paths. These pathways aim to ensure that debt will be steered towards a plausible reduction path and that the deficit will remain or be carried forward and maintained. below 3% of GDP in the medium term”.
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