What is Italy’s, what is my government’s position in this debate? My government is fully convinced about the virtues of budgetary discipline, fully convinced in operational terms, so much so that we have an objective, which has been agreed with the European Union, of achieving a balanced budget already next year, 2013, which is quite a bit before most of the other EU member states. But this is not just about the the European institutions or Germany - which holds good cards in the overall game - wanting so. This is also because, if our memory is not too short, the experience of Italy, France, Spain, Greece and other countries, including in the North, tells us that if there systematically buy popular and social consensus through expenditure that exceeds revenues, then those who ultimately pay the bill are the poor future generations.

Future generations are not an abstract concept. It is happening right now as present generations of Italian and in many other countries are indeed paying the price of the behaviour of governments many years and decades ago which thought they were doing something morally honourable by saying ‘yes’ to everybody, but in fact depriving the current young generations of the possibility to find a job.

So I have nothing against budgetary discipline. Budgetary discipline is good. My fellow Italians here have never and will never hear me say: “we have to comply with these requirements because the Commission or the Central Bank or Germany wants us to”. We are very committed to budgetary discipline and we are also intellectually convinced and very committed to structural reforms, which need to be carried out both at the EU and national level. Although quite a lot has been done we, like many, believe that Italy has to do more more, as also underlined by Luca Cordero di Montezemolo. There has hardly been any time wasted in this regard since my government took office, and we hope to bring more to the fore after Parliamentary approval of the labour market reform. The latter follows a pension reform, which was followed by a liberalization and competition drive and so on. So we are very much in line with the Anglo-Saxon countries in Europe, with the UK in particular, in believing that structural reforms are very important for growth domestically as well as EU level, which is the part that Michel Barnier is in charge and about which he spoke so eloquently, that is building of a genuinely single market.