On July 11 the EU President Herman van Rompuy convened emergency conference on the potential escalation of the debt crisis on Italy. This kind of financial turmoil has already affected the economies of Greece, Ireland and Portuguese. News was released by Reuters with reference to independent sources.
The official spokesman of van Rompuy De Backer said that the meeting will not be crisis but coordinating. According to De Backer Italy is not included into the agenda of the meeting.
At the same time Reuters’ sources insist that Italian economy will be discussed at the conference. The meeting will also be attended by the European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, The European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, the Eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker and Commissioner on economic and monetary affairs Olli Rhen.
As BBC News reports, after the conference held by van Rompuy the EU finance ministers will discuss the second bailout for Greece.
Italy occupies the second place among EU countries by its external debt (120% of GDP). On May 20 Standard&Poor’s rating agency has changed the credit rating of Italy from “stable” to “negative” due to slow economic growth and potential political instability of the country. On June 17 Moody’s has also warned that Italian credit rating could be decreased.
At the beginning of July Italian government has approved the budget statement till 2014 which stated that public expenditures should be reduced by 47 billion euro for four years. Opposition voiced criticism of the proposed budget because new government of 2013 will have to deal with the major curtailments of spending.
As soon as the news about the emergency conference spread in the mass media the euro fell against the US dollar. On Friday the euro traded at 1.435 against dollar but on Monday it fell down to 1.415 dollar. The MICEX trades showed the downfall of the euro by 0.13 ruble to 39.8021 rubles and the upturn of the dollar by 0.16 ruble to 28.0918 rubles.
