Italian Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi stepped up his attacks against other European Union
leaders on Sunday after an EU summit in Bratislava which he said amounted to no
more than "a nice cruise on the Danube."
Renzi said at the
end of Friday's summit he was dissatisfied with its closing statement, after he
was excluded from a joint news conference by German Chancellor Angela Merkel
and French President Francois Hollande..
In particular, he
criticized the lack of commitments on the economy and immigration in the
summit's conclusions, which he himself signed.
In a fiery interview
in daily Corriere della Sera on Sunday Renzi - who has staked his career on a
referendum this year on his plan for constitutional reform - intensified his
criticisms, though he remained vague on what commitments he would have liked
the summit to have produced.
"If we want to
pass the afternoon writing documents without any soul or any horizon they can
do it on their own," Renzi said of his fellow leaders.
"I don't know
what Merkel is referring to when she talks about the 'spirit of
Bratislava'," he said. "If things go on like this, instead of the
spirit of Bratislava we'll be talking about the ghost of Europe."
Renzi has promised
to resign if he loses the autumn referendum and is preparing a 2017 budget
which he says will cut taxes despite a slowing economy and record high public
debt.
"At Bratislava
we had a nice cruise on the Danube, but I hoped for answers to the crisis
caused by Brexit (Britain's exit from the EU), not just to go on a boat
trip," he said.
He was similarly
belligerent about the budget to be presented next month, saying there would be
"no negotiation" with Brussels, and money he planned to spend on
tackling immigration and making Italy safer from earthquakes would be excluded
from EU rules on deficit limits.
Other countries were
more guilty than Italy of breaking budget rules and Italy had met its
commitments on tackling the inflows of migrants crossing the Mediterranean,
Renzi said.
"I'm not going
to stay silent for the sake of a quiet life ... if someone wants to keep Italy
quiet they have picked the wrong place, the wrong method and the wrong
subject."
With polls showing
the referendum too close to call, Renzi insisted he had "never been so
optimistic" about its outcome. The ballot is expected to be held in late
November or early December.
The other EU leader
to most vocally criticize the results of the Bratislava summit was Hungarian
leader Viktor Orban, who faces his own domestic referendum next month, on the
EU's plan to relocate refugees throughout the continent.
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