Yesterday the Task Force leaded by Vittorio Colao has started its work with a 4 hours video conference to set up the Italian roadmap towards the so called phase 2, at the same time, also the structure to support Extraordinary Commissioner, Arcuri, has been established, counting on a Secretary, three Advisors and four units and five working groups for the technical support. The announcements by diverse EU countries on the restrictive measures has opened the door to the intervention by EU Commission. Today it is expected the presentation of the EU Communication to coordinate Governments’ exit strategy. The document is not a green light for countries to start lifting the restrictive measures though but a guideline, aimed at avoiding a second wave of the pandemic. As per insights, among the measures, there is also the invitation to collect data and develop a solid reporting system, to create a framework for the traceability of contacts with the use of mobile apps compliant with privacy rules, to expand testing capacity and harmonize methodologies, to increase the capacity and resilience of health systems and work on developing a safe and effective vaccine to "help end the Covid-19 virus.

 

After the green light given by EU Commission to guarantees schemes introduced by Liquidity Decree, the Government is continuing its work on future decrees. The request for the Budget variance to Parliament and the EU is expected next week. As per our sources, the Council of Ministers with the above-mentioned request on the agenda - which should reach the 40-50 billion additional deficit - should be held on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, with a meeting for the launch of the April decree within the weekend of next week. The Italian Government decisions will consider also Conclusions by European Council (April 23). On this point, the European Commissioner for Financial Stability, Financial Services and the Single Capital Market, Dombrovskis affirms he can imagine that the Recovery Fund - agreed on the last Eurogroup- would have an availability of 1,500 billion euros, admitting the amount, but a way to finance it could be through obligations supported by Member States guarantees. Meanwhile, the use of the ESM credit lines (ECCL) is diving the Government majority. The Five Stars Movement maintains its strong contrariety to the use of the ESM, the Democratic Party, through the words of Deputies Leader Delrio and Secretary Nicola Zingaretti, is prudently opening up to the possibility while Matteo Renzi strongly advocated that the ESM fund, without conditionality, should be used as soon as possible, defending the compromises reached by Gualtieri at the Eurogroup. In the meantime, the future economic outlook of the country is bearish. The International Monetary Fund has drastically cut the estimates on Italian GDP for 2020 to -9.1% from + 0.5% expected at the end of January next year, representing Italy as the most penalized in the euro area.