French Minister: “The Recovery Fund is too slow and complicated”. The truth can be told, but not in Italy
A French minister can be allowed to begin to tell the truth about the Recovery Fund, the new Golden Calf of Italian politics, to which to sacrifice everything, starting from the truth. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire gave an interview in which the judgment on both the Recovery Fund and the Union budget rules. Let's start with the Recovery Fund:
“I see that there are still interruptions and that the whole process is too slow. We must accelerate and that if we want to get out of the economic crisis in the best conditions, European money must arrive as quickly as possible ",
Referring to last year's Franco-German negotiations that led to the EU's historic decision to increase the common debt to be disbursed as grants to member states whose economies have been hammered by the pandemic, he added: “ We haven't spent all that political capital only for the plan to be delayed for technocratic reasons. . . It's too slow and it's too complicated. We have to speed up. "
France intended to spend at least half of its € 100 billion recovery plan – 40 per cent of which will be financed by the EU recovery fund – by the end of this year, Le Maire said, expecting a strong economic recovery later in 2021..
" This is perhaps the most difficult moment of the crisis because there are new variants of the virus that are very contagious, vaccinations have not yet been fully rolled out and there is an immense exhaustion of our citizens, especially in the economy – artisans, traders, small companies ". On the other hand, these words reveal the minister's fear of not being able to achieve this spending target due to the inefficiency of the European bureaucratic process, which is too slow and cumbersome. If France thinks it can't spend the money, how can we think we can?
Furthermore, Bruno Le Maire entered with a straight leg on the issue of European budget constraints deriving from the Maastricht Treaty, that is the famous 3% GDP deficit ratio and 60% GDP debt ratio, considering them no longer adequate for modern times, and unrealistic. In fact, he stated: "they should be re-evaluated to take account of reality – and that the reality is three things: the highest debt levels in our history, the lowest interest rates in our history, and the greatest investment needs in our history. history ". After all, France is currently enjoying negative rates and can easily bear high debt values, at least as long as the ECB supports national debt positions.
In all European countries, the budgetary limits and mechanisms of the Recovery Fund are being questioned. Instead in Italy they are untouchable words, as we have said., At least until we all realize that Recovery is just a great, enormous, illusion.
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The French Minister article : “The Recovery Fund is too slow and complicated”. The truth can be said, but not in Italy it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/ministro-franceseil-recovery-fund-troppo-lento-e-complicato-la-verita-si-puo-dire-ma-non-in-italia/ on Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:00:21 +0000.