The Italian Senate on Sunday approved the country's revised budget law and after a long dispute between Rome and Brussels over the first version of the law. The budget was approved by 167 members of the Senate and 78, with three abstentions, hours after it was put forward by the governing coalition of the far-right party and the populist five-star movement, after weeks of hard negotiations with the European Commission on amending its text.
While Senate approval of the budget gives confidence to the populist government, the text still requires approval by the House of Representatives, which is expected to vote before the end of this year.
The approval comes after an agreement reached last Wednesday between the European Commission and the Italian government to limit the general budget deficit to 2.04% of GDP, compared to 2.4% in the first project, with a growth of 1% for next year instead of 1.5%.
This agreement is supposed to avoid an increase in Italian debt, which is about 130% of its total domestic production.
It is noteworthy that a dispute broke out months ago between the Italian government and the European Commission on a draft budget containing a deficit of 2.4% of GDP, above the level pledged by the previous government, which was rejected by the Commission last October before opening the way for possible financial sanctions.
In this context, the government of Mr. Giuseppe Conte was forced to write off billions of euro of the new budget earmarked for two basic programs that it intends to implement. The first concerns the reform of the pension system that the Association wants, and the second is the minimum five-star return of citizenship.
