Italy's government has approved 45 billion euro in cuts over the next two years to balance the budget by 2013 to meet demands of European Central Bank.

The Cabinet approved the measures this evening despite fierce resistance from local government officials who denounced the emergency austerity measures as socially unjust.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi told a news conference that the the measures respond to requests from the ECB, which demanded a balanced budget a year earlier than anticipated as well as structural reforms to promote growth.

The Cabinet approved 20 billion euro in cuts for 2012 and 25 billion euro for 2013.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.