EU Austerity Policy Could Discredit Single Currency – Italian Party Leader

Austerity policies pursued by the European Union could discredit the bloc’s single currency, the euro, Italy’s Communist Refoundation Party Leader Paolo Ferrero told Sputnik.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier on Tuesday, an opinion poll conducted by ICM Research exclusively for Sputnik revealed that almost one-third of French, German and Greek respondents wanted to return to national currencies amid the sinking euro.

"Since these [austerity] policies have been justified in the name of Europe and to save the single currency, this has resulted in a widespread criticism of the euro," Ferrero said.

The politician, who served as Italy’s minister of social solidarity from 2006-2008, added that skepticism toward the euro was growing in Italy as austerity measures "decreased wages, pensions, and cuts to the welfare state."

He suggested that current austerity policies, if continued, "compromise" a united Europe.

Italy was among the worst hit EU countries in the 2009 European debt crisis emerging in the wake of the 2008 global financial downturn.

Italy’s government debt stood at 131 percent of the GDP by the end of the third quarter of 2014, outstripped only by Greece, according to Eurostat.

Cash-strapped Greece, currently failing to reach a deal with its international lenders, had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 177 percent last year, and is now considered to be on its way out of the eurozone.