EC rejects Italy's draft budgetary plan

The European Commission on Tuesday rejected Italy's draft budgetary plan for 2019, asking the country to summit a revised one.

The European Commission considers that Italy's draft budgetary plan for 2019 presents a particularly serious deviation from the Council's recommendation of July 13, 2018.

The Commission also notes that the plan is not in line with the commitments presented by Italy in its Stability Program of April 2018.

The Commission therefore requested Italy to submit a revised draft budgetary plan for 2019, which is the first time that it has done so with a member state.

"Italy's debt is among the highest in Europe, and Italian taxpayers spend about the same amount on it as on education. In this spirit, we see no alternative but to request the Italian government to revise its draft budgetary plan for 2019," said Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President for the Euro and Social Dialogue, also in charge of Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.

Italy's draft budgetary plan expects the government deficit to "markedly increase" to 2.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019, three times higher than initially planned.

According the Commission, Italy's public debt-to-GDP ratio, at 131.2 percent in 2017, is the second largest in the EU and one of the largest in the world.

"We look forward to an open and constructive dialogue in the weeks to come," Dombrovskis said.