The united government against the ECB: Meloni, Salvini and Tajani criticize the rate increase

So far it was still a negligible controversy, left in the hands of the head of the League Matthew Salvini, that you know, sometimes exaggerates. But after the statements made this morning by the premier Giorgia Meloni against the monetary policy of the ECB, the level of the confrontation with Frankfurt becomes serious.

On the one hand there is the president of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, which now no longer hesitates to confirm a new rise in interest rates in July – the tenth in a row – on the other hand, the government which contests the monetary tightening, while in Italy inflation shows a zero change in June. However, the numbers are still far from the 2 percent target (on an annual basis, inflation in Italy was 6.4 percent in June, Istat announced today).

And yet, says the prime minister during her briefing to the Chamber, Frankfurt’s recipe is “simplistic”: “It is certainly right to fight inflation decisively, but the simplistic recipe for rate hikes undertaken by the European Central Bank does not appear to the eyes of many the most correct path to pursue, considering that in our countries the generalized increase in prices is not the result of an economy that grows too quickly but of endogenous factors, first of all the energy crisis caused by the conflict in Ukraine”. The summary, hard, is that the rate hike “cannot end up hitting our economies more than inflation: the cure cannot become more harmful than the disease”.

Meloni’s words follow the discontent of the other majority parties. Matthew Salvini, deputy prime minister and head of the League, had defined the tightening of the Eurotower “a senseless and harmful choice” which “heavily affects families and businesses”, while “it does not favor growth”. The statements of Antonio Tajani, now president of Forza Italia, close the circle in the executive which is compacted thus against the central bank: “I don’t think that continuing to increase interest rates is going in the direction of growth: we risk a recession”, said the deputy prime minister in past days. This morning in Parliament he reiterated: “It is also in the national interest to contest the choices of the ECB when they are considered harmful to one’s own country“.

However, criticism of Christine Lagarde does not come only from the government. Charles Bonomi, president of Confindustria, had come to ask himself “whether the ECB is the German central bank or the European central bank”. And speaking at an event organized by Il Foglio he said: “There is great concern about this interest rate hike by central banks. We understand the policies to contain inflation but we cannot risk killing the patient for a therapeutic obstinacy. The risk is the recession and not just a technical one”.