Meloni Says She’ll Keep Italy on Draghi’s Course on Russia, Debt

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The front-runner to become Italy’s next prime minister said she wants to maintain the course set by Mario Draghi on support for Ukraine and avoid adding to domestic debt.

“I wouldn’t be in favor of widening the budget deficit because we are way too indebted,” Giorgia Meloni said at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, Italy. She added that standing by Western sanctions against Russia is needed to bolster Italy’s “international credibility.”

Meloni’s right-wing coalition has an almost 20 percentage point lead in polls ahead of the Sept. 25 election. She spoke Sunday to Italy’s business and financial elite at the forum on Lake Como, appearing side-by-side with her main competitor, Democratic Party head Enrico Letta, and other party chiefs.

The debate offered a rare opportunity to gauge policy differences and priorities ahead of the vote, with most eyes fixed on Meloni, a relatively unknown 45-year-old who if elected would become Italy’s first woman prime minister.

Despite a career in politics that spans more than 20 years, the Brothers of Italy leader has almost no government experience and only once served as a junior minister, more than a decade ago.

On Russia, Meloni wanted to quell doubts over the stance of her ally Matteo Salvini, who’s often cast doubts over the effectiveness of economic sanctions, and has a history of cultivating close relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. At the Cernobbio forum, Salvini said the European Union should compensate for the damage sanctions have done to economies such as Italy’s, a proposal shared by Meloni.

In an attempt to shore up her credibility on public finances, Meloni pushed back against Salvini on the need for more deficit spending to stimulate the economy. She urged Italy to decouple gas and power prices at the national level even before an EU agreement on the issue is reached, something that would only cost 3 billion to 4 billion euros ($3 billion to $4 billion) by the end of March, she said.

Democratic leader Letta told Bloomberg News on Saturday that electing the right-wing bloc would risk bringing Italy to the brink of bankruptcy, as it was in 2011 when Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister. “If there is an issue on which one cannot joke, it is precisely the issue of sanctions, war and the consequences of war,” Letta said during Sunday’s debate.

Read More: Letta Warns Right-Wing Win Will Bring Italy’s Debt Crisis Back

Letta, whose Democrats have been Draghi’s staunchest supporters, also criticized the right-wing coalition’s plan to renegotiate parts of Italy’s 200-billion-euro recovery plan, which offers EU funding for investments in exchange of reforms. The risk of halting both funds and reforms posed by such a renegotiation has been a recurrent theme at the Cernobbio forum.

“If the goal is to improve the plan, go ahead,” said Paola Severino, a former minister who is vice president of Luiss University in Rome. “Stopping it altogether would have very negative consequences for Italy.”

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