European integration has lost "propulsive force", Italy's populist premier Giuseppe Conte said on Thursday in a six-page letter to the bloc aimed at avoiding disciplinary action over the country's rising debt pile.
"The integration process, which in the first decades after World War II represented the goal for our advanced democracies seems to have lost its original propulsive force," said the letter.
"The result is that questions and concerns about the future of the EU multiply, when the current state of the economy calls for greater unity and more shared strategies to allow member states to successfully take on global competition."
The letter dated Wednesday is addressed to the EU's 27 other member countries, to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk and was posted to Conte's Facebook page and to the government's website on Thursday.
The letter pledges to abide by EU fiscal rules and claims public accounts are improving despite Italy's slowing growth and do not warrant EU sanctions.
"Italy, in the interest of its citizens and other European citizens, will adopt a prudent and consistent budgetary policy," said Conte. The 2019 budget deficit, currently forecast at 2.4% of GDP, would be "significantly better" than predicted, he wrote.
The letter comes ahead of a summit on Thursday and Friday to be attended by Conte and other European leaders in Brussels.
