Rome: Italy should consider dumping Europe’s single currency, the euro, and reintroducing the lira as a means of helping the country’s struggling economy, Welfare Minister Roberto Maroni said yesterday.
In an interview with the Rome-based daily La Repubblica, Maroni said his Northern League party would collect signatures aimed at calling a referendum on the matter. “I have no nostalgia for the lira. But our citizens are crying out for help,” Maroni said. “Over the past three years ... the euro has proved to be inadequate in the face of the slowdown of economic growth, the loss of competitiveness and the crisis of employment”.
Maroni said national governments should be given back the exchange rate leverage, which would allow them to devaluate in the face of growing competition from countries like China.
The minister, whose party is an outspoken critic of the European Union, described the euro as “the legitimate son of a European model that is failing”.
Discontent with the euro has grown in Italy amid perceptions that it has raised consumer prices and driven the economy into recession due to strong competition from China, particularly in the traditionally strong textile industry.
The minister called for a referendum to see if Italians want to temporarily bring back the lira.
“I say not to discard this hypothesis because it isn’t at all far-fetched,” Maroni said.
“Wouldn’t it be better perhaps to return, temporarily, at least to a system of double circulation” of the euro and the lira, Maroni said.
When the euro came into circulation, many merchants steeply raised their prices, by dropping off the zeros from the old prices in lira. The changeover rate from lira to euro was a little under 2,000 lire for every euro. With the adoption of the euro, Italian consumers found themselves paying much more for goods and services ranging from fruit and vegetables to plumbing repairs and dining out.
With elections due next spring and the nation in recession, Italy’s politicians are becoming increasingly sensitive to public anger over economic difficulties and likely to be worried about any anti-European backlash in the wake of “no” votes from France and the Netherlands over the new European Union constitution.
Maroni is a leader of the Northern League, a party whose base is largely built on owners of small and medium-sized businesses in northern Italy. The euro-skeptic party is one of Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s main coalition partners.
“I have no nostalgia for the lira. But from the citizens a cry for help is reaching our ears,” Maroni said. ´The euro is the legitimate child of the European model which, with worry, we’re watching fail,” he was quoted as saying.
n BRUSSELS: The European Union’s executive  Comission said yesterday that the euro is “forever,” dismissing a call from an Italian minister for reintroduction of the lira.
“Like the coins and the banknotes, the euro is forever”, said commission spokeswoman Amelia Torres, commenting a proposal on the appearance of future euro coins.
She was speaking after the euro fell strongly against the dollar yesterday following Maroni’s remarks, which she dismissed as a “flight  of fancy”.
In Madrid, EU monetary affairs commissioner Joaquin Almunia also rallied to the defence of the euro saying yesterday: “I think  that no one will be able to call into question an achievement that  cost us so much to reach and which has brough us so many  advantages.”        – Agencies
Last update on: 4-6-2005