Italy wants France and Spain to support its campaign to change the EU’s fiscal rules and focus them more on growth in the face of a regional and global economic slowdown, Economy Minister Giovanni Tria said in an interview.

Italy’s government bonds had their best week in more than six years, and yields are at their lowest since 2016, prompting the government to lock in bargains by issuing 50-year debt this week but the driver isn’t budget prudence, but the prospect of ECB moves, providing a guaranteed buyer of Italian debt.

The surge in the vote for an anti-immigration party in Sweden had little effect on sovereign debt markets, with the focus remaining on Italy’s new populist government as it prepares to unveil its firsts budget next month.

WITH just six days to go to Johannesburg and almost eight months since Paris, it is time to look on the bright side, time to move beyond the recognised five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and that “low-down, no-good, cheating b*****d Henry” – time to acknowledge that defeat in the play-off was the best thing that could have happened to us, that nothing good could have come of our boys going big game hunting in South Africa and that, all things considered, the nation has been spared a World Cup of pain.