Italy can be an oddity in Europe. It is the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) that is most anxious to apply the fiscal austerity enjoined by the European Commission and the Germans, whereas the right-wing People of Freedom (PdL) movement under Silvio Berlusconi is keen to ignore deficit ceilings in an effort to revive Italy's stagnant economy-and, conveniently, to fulfil Mr Berlusconi's campaign promise of lower taxes. The trouble is that left and right are yoked together in the government led by the PD's Enrico Letta. The two parties' clashes are increasingly denting the government's credibility. In May Mr Letta's cabinet suspended, but did not scrap, a property tax that the pdl wants to abolish. On June 26th it put off, though only for three months, a 1% rise in value-added tax that the PdL wants to avoid.
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