Italy preparing European-style cuts, minister says

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A deficit cutting package in Italy, worth 27.6 billion euros ($35 billion) over two years, will include measures similar to those announced by other European nations, Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti was quoted as saying.Il Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted Tremonti as saying tha package, expected to be approved before the end of this month, had not yet been finalised."The measures which will make up the budget adjustment in the next two years will not be very different from those being taken by Paris, Madrid, London, Berlin and Lisbon," the paper quoted Tremonti as saying on Sunday.Corriere said this could include broad reductions in public salaries, as in Spain and Portugal, and cuts to the number of state employees, as in France, by hiring only one for every two employees who retire.The package would be worth just over 13 billion euros in 2011 and more than 14.5 billion the next, the paper said.The budget adjustment, which had long been denied by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government, looks set to cause controversy.Rosy Bindi, a prominent lawmaker with the opposition Democratic Party, said the plan would do nothing to tackle Italy's deep-rooted problems like tax evasion and corruption.Minister for Simplication Roberto Calderoli, a member of the pro-autonomy Northern League party, said on Friday he would propose a 5 percent pay cut for ministers and law makers.On Sunday, he said he was looking at ways of reducing resources for Italy's semi-autonomous regions including Sardinia and Sicily, both of them in the south.Renato Brunetta, minister of the public administrator, said on Sunday the government was also considering delaying by a few months the retirement of public workers due this year.Raffaele Bonanni, head of the CISL union federation, said his members would support the cuts as long as they affected all members of society equally, and did not hit the poorest most.
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