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09 April 2020 On the eve of the resumption of the Eurogroup meeting, Italy is cloaked in increasingly belligerent tones. The hard line, in the intentions of the majority, should induce the hawks to agree to the solidarity fund proposed by France, a fund that would be financed with a common European debt. This is a proposal that will eventually take a few months to materialize; in the meantime it may be inevitable for Italy to accept the Mes.

Even in his interview granted yesterday to the German Bild Zeitung, Conte was explicit in stating that, if the budget rules are not loosened, for Europe it is the end. With an M5S that has always opposed Italy's accession to the Mes, for Conte there is a problem of keeping the majority, when the parliament will have to ratify the decisions taken in Europe. At the meeting last night, between the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and the two ministers Roberto Gualtieri and Luigi Di Maio, the possible point of fall in the negotiation between allies was also addressed: although the MES will be included in the Eurogroup agreement, it is not said that is activated by Italy, since it is not mandatory.

The Eurogroup will be held this afternoon, it was supposed to be held yesterday but due to the lack of an agreement it has been postponed to today. We will see what the outcome of this meeting will be, if truly the only conditionality required will be the constraint that the funds are used to face the coronavirus crisis and that at the end of the crisis there is no automatic return to standard conditionalities. It will depend on this if the timid openings of a part of the vertices of the movement are not closed. The three will meet again this morning before the Eurogroup, aware that the coronabond proposal has never even been considered.

The Netherlands remained practically alone against the other 18 in demanding the conditioned Mes, albeit with modalities diluted over time. Until now, the compromise proposals proposed by Mario Centeno, Bruno Le Maire and Olaf Scholz are useless. According to the French finance minister "it is essential to use the Mes, without adding conditions that could be perceived as provocations". France and Germany also agree to "include a recovery fund in the global package". The German minister added that solidarity "must be organized quickly", and the MES "must not be connected to a scenario in which, like ten years ago, the commissioners or a troika arrived".

The French 'recovery fund' seems to be the most acceptable compromise for everyone, especially if you don't go into the details of how to feed it. But it would not be impossible to find a compromise on limited common resources that guarantee a limited issue of securities. By delimiting the operation as much as possible, and therefore the risks to be shared, it could also become acceptable for the Netherlands and Austria. But it would be a limited instrument, which could never reach the many hundreds of billions of euros hoped for by the southern countries. The Mes therefore remains inevitable.

Now it is a question of finding a formulation that allows each minister to return home waving the flag of victory.