Now, as to the last point: the demand stimulus. I think we should consider ideas carefully and in a cool way, whether or not they depart from orthodoxy, from the orthodoxy of budgetary rigor. I will briefly mention two points that the Italian government is developing these days with our key partners in Europe and with the European institutions, which in my view provide room for growth in a non-inflationary way, fully consistent with the rigor of the Maastricht Treaty, the Stability Pact and the Fiscal Compact.

The first one is a very old topic, which I had already proposed to the European Commission in 1996 when the original Stability Pact was discussed. If a country has a very high debt to GDP ratio, say 120 %, is this the only thing that matters? Or should we also consider what the money was used for. I, for one, would be a lot happier if the country that has a 120 percent debt-to-GDP ratio had used the money for building top-class infrastructure of all sorts - from classical infrastructures to broad band etc. - rather than to finance current expenditure. But the Maastricht Treaty, the Stability Pact and now the Fiscal Compact don’t really give any importance other than minimal to these distinctions between public spending and investment spending.

I believe that work can be done on this, of course it is delicate, of course we cannot jump to an adventurous position saying that anything that any government classifies as public investment should be exempted or looked at favourably under European rules. Frequently in the past governments have covered losses, for ex example, of state-participated companies and have accounted this as investments. So there must be very strict criteria at the European level that distinguish between admissible public investment from this purposes and non-admissible public investment. Arguing that it is difficult to make, implement and enforce the distinction is, in my view, a secondary consideration. The key aspect is: do we really believe that public consumption and public investment have the same economic value? No. If you are interested, as the Germans are, into the supply side and the accumulation of productive capital, then public investment is more important than public consumption or private consumption. We have seen the consequences, for example, in Spain and Ireland of private consumption, including through mortgages or indebtedness that were not subject to any limits.