ROME, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The European Union needs to build sovereign funds to support the clean energy transition, Italy's industry lobby said on Friday as it called on member states to provide the bloc with a larger budget to underpin the issuance of common debt.
Carlo Bonomi, the head of sector group Confindustria, said the bloc has set "stringent targets" to reduce climate emissions without considering "all the interests worthy of protection" and the impact of the raising gas prices.
"We have tried hard to emphasize the risk that without European common sovereign funds the single market will break down in the coming years," Bonomi told the group's general assembly in Rome.
He said easing state aid rules in the EU would benefit only those states with a larger budget leeway, including France and Germany, damaging highly indebted Italy.
"(This) is a very serious threat to Italy, Europe's second largest manufacturing country," Bonomi said.
He told the assembly that after the next European election, which will take place in 2024, the European Union needed to move towards stronger integration and broaden its common budget.
"A massive expansion of the common debt contracted at the European level cannot hold without an expansion of the underlying common European budget," he told the assembly.
As Italian opposition parties table proposals to set a minimum hourly wage, which right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has greeted with scepticism, Bonomi said this would not be enough to solve the issue of low salaries.
"Our constitution requires us to pay to the worker a fair wage," Bonomi said.
A report in July by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed real wages in Italy had fallen by 7.5% at the end of last year compared to the pre-pandemic period in 2019, marking the steepest decline among the world's major economies.
(Reporting by Angelo Amante Editing by Keith Weir)
