ROME, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Italy's prime minister has attacked the European Union's rules on fiscal discipline as bad for business and economic growth.
Silvio Berlusconi said unless Eurozone economies became more competitive and cut state economic controls, they risk falling into "strategic decline," the Financial Times reported Wednesday.
Specifically, he blasted a "rigid obsession with fiscal constraints" in the EU's Maastricht treaty, which controls how EU governments are supposed to keep budget deficits under 3 percent of gross domestic product.
"These perverse factors have increased the value of our currency (the euro) beyond what is necessary, and have artificially penalized the competitiveness of our industries and services," he said.
He complained, "The blessed introduction of the single European currency has, up to now, produced an outcome that is the exact opposite of the purpose for which the euro was born, and that is an asphyxiated economy and limping growth."
