remier Giorgia Meloni considers the new European Union rules for public finance agreed at an extraordinary ECOFIN meeting on Wednesday to be for Italy an improvement on the past, according to a statement issued by her office at Palazzo Chigi.

“Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni considers it important that a common-sense compromise has been found among the 27 EU member states for a political agreement on the new Stability and Growth Pact,” the statement said.

“Despite very different starting positions and requirements among the states, the new Pact is for Italy an improvement on the conditions of the past.,” it continued.

The new fiscal rules are “less rigid and more realistic than those currently in force” and “avert the risk of an automatic return to the previous parameters, which would have been unsustainable for many member states”, the statement said.

The premier acknowledges the inclusion in the new Pact of “innovative mechanisms to take into account the effects of external and extraordinary events in the calculation of the numerical parameters to be respected”, according to the statement.

However, she also “regrets” the “failure to automatically exclude expenditure on strategic investments from the deficit and debt balance to be respected”.

This is, concluded the statement, a “battle that Italy nevertheless intends to continue to pursue in the future”.