Italian economy minister criticizes EU decision-making as too slow

ROME

Italy’s economy minister on Friday criticized the European Union’s decision-making processes, saying they are too slow and cumbersome.

“The EU is incapable of taking decisions in a timely and strategic manner. It’s impossible to decide,” Giancarlo Giorgetti told a discussion at the Atreju political festival organized by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party in Rome.

“It works like an ‘apartment block meeting,’” he said. “What I understood is that the political dimension of Europe is missing, because politics is the concept associated with [taking] a decision.”

Giorgetti said the probabilities that the EU will reach an agreement on new fiscal rules for the bloc at next week’s meeting of EU economy and finance ministers are “low.”

“The negotiations went on ... they will go on until there will be different political conditions,” he said, without elaborating further.

The EU's fiscal rules have been suspended since 2020, but are to be reinstated from 2024 and amendments are currently being negotiated by governments.

Talks have struggled to make progress ahead of the year-end deadline. Italy, which was already highly indebted before the pandemic and now is even more, is proposing to make them as lenient as possible.

Both Giorgetti and Meloni have said the country will not accept new EU fiscal rules it cannot follow.