Italy’s Di Maio rules out euro exit, denounces scaremongering

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio on Sunday ruled out that the government could take the country out of the euro zone, saying such talk was no more than scaremongering by its political opponents.

“No-one need fear an exit from the euro or from the European Union, there is no danger and no intention because that isn’t what the Italians asked of us at the election,” Di Maio said in an interview on private television station Canale 5.

Di Maio, who leads the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement which governs with the right-wing League, told the station that the opposition Democratic Party said the government wanted to leave the euro “because they want to scare people”.

Both the League and 5-Star once campaigned on an anti-euro platform, but the former rivals ditched any plans to leave the single currency when they joined forces to form a government in June, following an inconclusive national election.

However, financial markets remain nervous despite repeated reiterations that ditching the euro is not in the government’s program, and occasional eurosceptic comments by coalition members have triggered sell-offs of Italian government bonds.

An Ipsos opinion poll published on Saturday in daily Corriere della Sera showed 61 percent of Italians wanted to keep the euro, compared with just 27 percent who favored a return to Italy’s old lira currency.

Disclaimer: Fusion Media would like to remind you that the data contained in this website is not necessarily real-time nor accurate. All CFDs (stocks, indexes, futures) and Forex prices are not provided by exchanges but rather by market makers, and so prices may not be accurate and may differ from the actual market price, meaning prices are indicative and not appropriate for trading purposes. Therefore Fusion Media doesn`t bear any responsibility for any trading losses you might incur as a result of using this data.

Fusion Media or anyone involved with Fusion Media will not accept any liability for loss or damage as a result of reliance on the information including data, quotes, charts and buy/sell signals contained within this website. Please be fully informed regarding the risks and costs associated with trading the financial markets, it is one of the riskiest investment forms possible.