Italy’s defiant coalition warns of financial ‘Armageddon’ if Brussels picks a budget fight

Italy’s insurgent coalition has warned of a financial cataclysm of global proportions if the eurozone authorities reject the country’s budget plans and ratchet up economic stress as a tool of pressure.

“If anybody in Brussels is stupid enough to think they can use the ‘Greek textbook’ against us, they will find that the crisis is not Greece squared, but Greece cubed,” said Claudio Borghi, economics chief for the Lega party and chairman of the budget committee in the lower house of parliament.

“In Greece, the EU managed to turn what started as small problem into disaster through their own mismanagement, but this would be a thousand times worse. It would be Armageddon,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

Tensions in Rome have reached fever pitch on reports of a crisis meeting on Wednesday night between Italian president Sergio Mattarella and Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank. The Italian press have raised the possibility of a ‘Commissariamento’, a drastic step that would effectively put Italy under EU economic control.