It is unprecedented because the EU let them get away with it the last 3 years without applying sanctions, whilst they continued to increase their debts without any reasonable plan to deal with it. Increasing the debt and increasing its percentage. The EU understands that the debt will increase but wants the percentage to reduce.
Cutting tax and increasing public spending is great when your house is in order. Look at Germany for example. Italy's debt is the second highest in the EU (way over 100% of output) and needs to be addressed.
But those unelected EU officials are a law unto themselves.
Especially the Central Bank President Draghi, the Foreign Policy President Mogherini and Parliament President Tajani. Who are all Italian, of course.
You have to be careful when talking about national debts. Debts have two aspects to them - the amount owed and the time frame within which it must be paid: in the case of govt gilts, the maturity date. Ignoring interest for a second, you can essentially divide the one by the other to work out what kind of hole (if any kind) you are in. Whom you owe is also crucial. Without national debt, people's pensions would be in deep shit. So Japan topples along with a national debt of around 200% output, most of it owed to Japanese people. It still functions. Meanwhile, the UK's national debt has a really long average maturity of somewhere around 15 years, again large chunks of it owed to British people. In Italy, a whopping 70 per cent is owed to Italians, one of the highest rates.
Also, if the private sector isn't borrowing, the public sector has to. Otherwise you end up with deflationary pressures and things tend to grind to a halt as the incentive to invest disappears.
In the case of Italy, it has refinanced its debt and extended maturity over the last few years. It isn't in danger of bankruptcy as its interest payments are going down, not up. Increasing public debt at this time of poor economic performance is perfectly reasonable, not irresponsible. Some would say that it would be stupid not to.
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
ETA:
There are also a lot of smoke and mirrors around public/private debt. A govt can borrow money to build houses, for instance, paying it back over the decades with the rents it takes. Or it can get a private company to borrow the money and build the houses. In the first case, the debt is added to the 'national debt', but the state owns an asset at the end of it. In the second case, there is no public debt, only private, and the state owns nothing at the end of it. Headline figures of x% gdp national debt are meaningless without a lot more context. And looking only at public debt while ignoring private debt is also meaningless.
