Italy's Berlusconi hits back at EU demands

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi hit back on Monday at European Union partners who have been pressing Italy for swift economic reforms, saying no country in the bloc was in a position to give lessons to others.

As cabinet held an extraordinary meeting to discuss fresh reforms demanded by partners including Germany and France, Berlusconi issued a statement saying Italy would present firm proposals at the next EU summit on Wednesday.

The comment came after German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded action from Berlusconi at a news conference on Sunday which Italian media interpreted as humiliating for the 75-year-old prime minister.

"Nobody in the Union can appoint themselves administrators and speak in the name of elected governments and the peoples of Europe," Berlusconi said in the statement. "Noone is in a position to be giving lessons to their partners."

He said Italy had taken steps to shore up its public finances and repeated it would balance the budget by 2013. He said his government had clear positions on how to address the sovereign debt crisis and the crisis in the banking sector, "in particular the Franco-German" system.

EU leaders have become increasingly exasperated at the Berlusconi government's erratic response to the crisis which could threaten the entire euro zone if Italy does not shore up its finances and regain the confidence of financial markets.

Italian newspapers commented bitterly on the wry smiles exchanged between Merkel and Sarkozy on Sunday when they demanded Rome act more quickly.

"It was not nice, for an Italian, to be present yesterday at the news conference in Brussels held jointly by Merkel and Sarkozy," the daily Corriere della Sera said in an editorial.

Italy, the euro zone's third largest economy, is now firmly at the centre of the debt crisis as alarm has grown at its stagnant economy and the sustainability of its 1.8 trillion euro debt pile.

Under pressure from its partners, Berlusconi's struggling centre-right government has announced a succession of reforms and budget balancing measures since August when market pressure forced the European Central Bank to support Italian bonds by intervening in the market.

However, markets remain sceptical and Italian 10-year bond yields are now nearly 6 percent, close to levels reached when the ECB began buying bonds in August.