(Finance) – The European Commissioner, Paul Gentiloni, reiterated the position ofEuropean Union next to the United States in the international arena. “We are not neutral spectators, we are allies of the United States”, declared Gentiloni International Monetary Fund, answering a question on relations between the EU, China and the United States following the recent visit to Beijing by the President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyenand the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
“We are in dialogue with the American authorities. On the one hand, Europe is making its own industrial policy plans on clean technologies, on rare minerals, on the things we need to focus on today for innovation. And at the same time we are negotiating with the United States to have treatment on some of these aspects that is not discriminatory. I have to say this dialogue is going in the right direction”, he then explained about American protectionism and theInflation Reduction Act of Washington.
“We are all aware that there is a global rush to clean technologies which concerns friendly countries and those that compete. I think that the dialogue that has been under way for a few weeks with the United States is a condition for preventing this competition from turning into a war of discriminatory subsidies”, underlined Gentiloni. “The EU will implement subsidy policies but they will not be discriminatory, especially towards allies. The dialogue is progressing well, I had confirmation of this with talks with Lael Brainard, Joe Biden’s economic adviser”. “She started with a greater misunderstanding and now it seems that, while there are still requests from us, there is a dialogue that works,” he added.
The European Commissioner then returned to some central issues in the Italian political debate, primarily the PNRR. “The sooner you can get to the
work on the changes” to the PNRR “the better,” he replied to the journalists present who asked updates. “We need to work on it as soon as possible and I am convinced that it is also the awareness of the government”, he added, underlining that “the challenge of growth remains for the EU and for theItaly fundamental: we cannot resign ourselves to a return to zero-point growth in Europe, and this requires work on investments. And this for Italy means PNRR”.
“All European countries, I would say all countries in the world, have had a surge in debt for the pandemic and for what has happened in the last two or three years. For advanced economies, including Italy, what matters for markets is the trajectory, that is, putting up the debt
a trajectory descendant and I think is the intention of the Italian government”, Gentiloni then declared. As regards the possibility of excluding military expenditure for theUkraine from the calculation of the debt, the Commissioner confirmed that “it is one of the things that will form part of our discussion. Certainly we would like, on the one hand, to have a gradual path of debt reduction and on the other, incentive mechanisms for strategic investments”.
“What these strategic investments are will be part of the discussion because different countries have different priorities. I think it is reasonable to think about those on Defence but it is a debate that we will have with the member countries”, he added.