through europe

  On Tuesday evening, at the end of another day of petty parliamentary bargaining, the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced that he will resign once the Italian budget is approved by the Parliament. This step has allegedly been made to comply with the requests “of the European Commission” (this should probably read the BCE, the IMF, and the financial markets).

After almost twenty years, it seems that the political trajectory of Berlusconi is about to come to an end. In truth, his political career ended at least one year ago, when his parliamentary majority was saved by “persuading” a handful of MPs from the benches of the opposition to change sides.

On Friday, at the end of the G20 meeting in Cannes, the President of the EU Commission Josè Barroso announced that “Italy has asked on its initiative to the IMF to monitor its commitment to fiscal and economic reforms.”  This monitoring process will start immediately – next week, Barroso will fly to Rome with a group of IMF inspectors – and will be repeated every three months, in order “to verify” that the Italian Minister of Economy is implementing the “reforms” effectively. Great emphasis was placed on the fact that the Italian government “voluntarily asked” for IMF surveillance.