If Spain goes under, Italy will come under even more scrutiny.

I hope that my government can help change Italian mentality.

As to the question of elected or not elected, each member of the European Commission has been appointed jointly by the governments of the 15 member states, and undergone individual scrutiny and a vote of confidence from the European Parliament.

The Italian economy has been held back for decades.

Growth in any individual European country has to be the result of policies for growth pursued in that country consistent with budgetary discipline.

In the area of macroeconomic policies, I think we'll see more centralization, like in the budgetary sphere.

This is certainly not the first case in which a merger approved in one place hasn't gone through in the other. There was a case last year where the merger between two EU companies was approved here and blocked in the U.S.