[Politico] MILAN ‐ The Italian government’s decision to bust the deficit limits it had agreed with the European Union is depressing. But it’s not surprising.
It’s not just that Rome is now governed by a grand coalition of extremists: Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Economic Development Minister Luigi Di Maio’s anti-establishment 5tar Movement.
For years, Italian politicians have portrayed the country’s fiscal constraints as the result of foreign machinations ‐ unfair limitations imposed by Brussels or Berlin.
Right-wingers have portrayed the financial storm that ousted then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in 2011 as a conspiracy. Italy’s rising cost of borrowing, they claim, was somehow weaponized to drive out one of the few politicians who stood up to Germany.
More recently, former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi demanded, and obtained, "flexibility" over Brussels-mandated budget constraints, thereby undermining the legitimacy of fiscal rules.
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