EU confirms Italy’s coronavirus spending won’t impact budget compliance

The European Commission has confirmed that Italy's extra spending to battle the coronavirus outbreak won't be taken into consideration when assessing the country's compliance with the EU's budget rules. "As regards the announced package of support measures, any one-off budgetary spending, incurred in relation to the response to the outbreak, would be excluded by definition from the computation of the structural balance and not taken into account when assessing compliance with the required fiscal effort under the existing rules," European Commission Vice President Valdis Dombrovskis and Economics Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni explained in a letter on Saturday, per Reuters.