Podcast: In The Room
Vincenzo Visco: "We couldn't accept that Spain could do better than Italy"
Vincenzo Visco with Romano Prodi in 2007
In September 1996, four months after taking office, Italy’s new centre-left prime minister Romano Prodi flew to Valencia for a crucial bilateral summit with José María Aznar, his conservative Spanish counterpart.
Germany, France and the EU's core members were getting ready to swap their currencies for the euro. Much as they wanted to join them, Prodi and his ministers - with the exception of Treasury chief Carlo Azeglio Ciampi - believed they needed more time to reduce the budget deficit, inflation, and interest rates. But, as one of the EU’s big three and a founding member of the postwar communities, Rome wanted company in sitting out the first euro wave. In Valencia, without advisers or even translators, Prodi lobbied Aznar to help Italy save face but met a firm veto.
"The Aznar position was very tough and somehow shocking for both Prodi and Ciampi," says Vincenzo Visco, who had joined the Prodi-Ciampi administration as finance minister in the spring. "During the flight back to Italy ... Ciampi convinced Prodi to try to enter the first group. The reason we changed our position was strictly linked to the meeting with Aznar. I know that Prodi says something different but, as far as I remember, that was the reason: we couldn't accept that Spain could do better than Italy".
Vincenzo Visco was Italian finance minister from 1996 to 2000 under Prodi and Massimo D'Alema and again under Prodi from 2006 to 2008. He was educated in economics at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of York then joined the Bank of Italy before leaving for a professorship at the University of Pisa and LUISS University of Rome. He was an independent left MP for 25 years. Earlier this year, he published (in Italian) The Tax War with Giovanna Faggionato.
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In The Room is a series of conversations with officials who played crucial roles in the history of the EU - often but not always behind the scenes.
Edited and produced by Emin Fikić at davidstudio.