ROME: Prime Minister Mario Monti outlines austerity measures aimed at restoring confidence in Italy’s strained public finances on Thursday when he goes before the Senate to seek a vote of confidence in his new government.
The former European Commissioner, who took office on Wednesday, will present his programme in the Senate at around 1730 IST before a confidence vote in the evening. He will seek a separate vote of confidence in the lower house on Friday.
Monti starts his first full day as prime minister comforted by an opinion poll that said an overwhelming majority of Italians supported him.
The poll taken by the respected Piepoli Institute for La Stampa newspaper just before he officially took office said 73 percent of those asked believed he would be able to form a government capable of leading an extraordinary effort to fix Italy’s problems.
Even 60 per cent of voters from the centre-right, the grouping that backed the last government of ousted prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said they had faith in Monti.
In a front-page editorial, the Corriere della Sera newspaper said Monti had received a ”chorus of placets,” (the Latin term for ”it is agreed”) from Italy and Europe.
With Italy at the heart of the euro zone debt crisis, the measures Monti announces are unlikely to be enough on their own to rebuild shattered market confidence.
But they will be vital to restoring credibility with international partners who had long lost patience with the repeatedly unfulfilled promises of Monti’s flamboyant predecessor Berlusconi.
Monti took the key economy and finance portfolio himself and appointed Corrado Passera, chief executive of Intesa Sanpaolo, one of Italy’s big two banks, as industry minister in an unelected cabinet which contained no politicians.
He gave nothing away when asked about his programme on Wednesday, but the broad thrust of the measures is expected to match closely reform demands made by European authorities to Berlusconi’s centre-right government.
Reforming a system that allows many Italians to claim a pension before the age of standard retirement age of 65 and loosening hiring and firing rules that protect some workers but discourage job creation are among possible measures.
There has also been speculation about a wealth tax on privately held assets, possibly including first homes, a measure that has been strongly opposed by Berlusconi’s centre-right party but which unions and the left have urged repeatedly.
Monti said on Wednesday he was confident his new government would help restore confidence to panicked financial markets but the task he faces was underlined by the continued surge in Italian bond yields.
Yields on 10-year bonds were over 7 per cent, near the levels that forced Greece and Ireland to seek an international bailout, which would overwhelm the euro zone’s current financial defences if it were needed by Italy, the bloc’s third largest economy.
The appointment of Monti, a sober and reserved economist and tough negotiator with a decade of experience as European Commissioner, was greeted with palpable relief by foreign leaders exasperated by the scandal-plagued Berlusconi.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed the appointment and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would meet Monti as soon as possible.
Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the euro zone finance ministers group, who said he was particularly pleased that the prime minister had taken the finance portfolio himself and said Monti was ”the man for the situation”.
The growing threat that Italy’s stagnant economy will slip into recession next year will make it increasingly difficult to keep control of its huge public debt, which amounts to 120 percent of gross domestic product, the second highest in the euro zone behind Greece. (UNI)