RPT: EU Recovery Fund Offers Italy Belated Solutions While Posing Great Risks - Lawmaker

GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th July, 2020) ENOA, Italy, July 25 (Sputnik), Anastasia Levchenko - The European Union's COVID-19 recovery fund does not provide Italy with the immediate aid that it requires and, at the same time, may impose crippling economic obligations on the country, Paolo GENOA (Pakistan Point news / Sputnik - 25th July, 2020) rimoldi, Italian politician and member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Lega party, told Sputnik.

Italy will receive 209 billion Euros ($239 billion) from the 750 billion euro economic recovery fund that was approved by EU leaders on Tuesday after four days of tough negotiations in Brussels. According to the terms of the deal, Rome will have access to 81 billion euros in grants and 127 billion euros in loans.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte praised the agreement at a press conference after the summit, but Grimoldi raised several concerns with the deal.

"We will see this money in more than a year, at the end of 2021 if it is okay, while the urgency was to have it immediately and without conditions. This is money that we will have on loan in exchange for cuts and sacrifices, risking the [European] troika to decide for us whether to increase the age of pensions, the cuts to health, welfare or schools. And we risk this only for money we will take in over a year?" Grimoldi said.

Conte has said that a special task force would be created in Italy to manage the financial resources from the recovery fund.

After meeting with the parliamentary majority earlier on Friday, Conte said the Interministerial Committee for European Affairs (CIAE) will manage the issue of the reforms in Italy that will be required to gain access to money from the EU stimulus package.

"Conte continues to set up task forces that cost and are useless. The expert task force led by manager [Vittorio] Colao had prepared an economic plan that the government did not even want to evaluate. We had 800 experts who did not give an indication that the government has used it. And now we want to repeat the same mistakes?" Grimoldi said.

It is still unclear what the exact conditions for accessing the EU recovery fund are going to be. Former deputy minister of economic development Michele Geraci said in an interview with Sputnik that they are likely to be in line with the European Commission's general priorities for digitalization and a transition to a green economy.