The constitutional reforms due for a December 4 referendum in Italy are “good”, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in an interview yesterday, adding that he hoped they will be approved.
Proposed reforms would reduce the veto powers of the upper chamber of parliament and those of regional administrations, to the benefit of the government.
Supporters say this would make Italy more stable, while critics fear a weakening of democratic checks and balances.
“I don’t know if it will be useful to [Italian Prime Minister Matteo] Renzi if I say that I hope for a ‘yes’ win. I will only say that I hope that the ‘no’ will not win,” Juncker told the La Stampa newspaper.
“The referendum is key to define Italy’s institutional set up for the next years. I do not want to interfere in the debate. But it is obvious that Italy must continue its reform process. And it is good that Renzi is tackling institutional architecture issues,” he added.
Renzi, who leads the “yes” campaign, claimed on Thursday that Italy will have greater influence on key European Union policies like migration if reforms are approved, because the country will be less prone to government crises.
Juncker said frontline countries like Italy and Greece received insufficient help from EU peers on migration issues.
A plan was agreed last year to move 160,000 refugees from the two countries to other EU states, but only about 7,500 have been relocated so far.
The relocation plan has been opposed by Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
Renzi has proposed to punish them by curtailing EU regional funding, which disproportionally benefits newer central and eastern EU nations.
The head the EU executive said “some countries’” refusal to take in refugees was unacceptable, as well as preferences for non-Muslim migration, expressed by several eastern European capitals.
“These kind of sentences run against the entire history of Europe,” he said.
But Juncker also reacted to Renzi’s frequent bashing of EU institutions.
“I struggle to accept these acerbic remarks about the Commission [...] I’d like some politicians to look at us more fairly,” he said.
Renzi has already won the backing of outgoing US President Barack Obama and key business leaders.
Such endorsements, however, are double-edged sword, as they allow the opposition to depict Renzi as following the agenda of foreign powers and big corporations.
A member of the far-right Northern League, which is campaigning for a “no” vote, said that Juncker would receive another disappointment from Italian voters, after the Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s victory in the United States.
“All these political and financial leaders have not yet understood that if they suggest one thing, people do exactly the opposite, because they have had enough of them, Renzi and everybody else who do their bidding,” the League’s Roberto Calderoli said.