(BRUSSELS) - New Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti vowed on Wednesday to maintain the previous government's efforts to improve Italy's public finances despite campaign promises to cut taxes.

"Our policy will be to keep our promises," he told journalists during his first meeting with his EU counterparts since taking office last week.

Tremonti said the new government would stick to its predecessor's commitment to balance the public accounts by 2011.

Even before Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government took office, the European Commission stepped up warnings to Rome to keep up efforts to improve its finances.

With slowing economic growth expected to crimp tax revenues, the commission forecast recently that the Italian budget deficit would rise from 2.3 percent in 2008 to 2.4 percent in 2009.

Berlusconi left bad memories in Brussels from his previous 2001-2006 term, which was marked by a swelling public deficit and steady standoffs with the EU's executive arm.

When he left power in 2006, the gap between the Italian government's receipts and expenditures was close to 4.0 percent of gross domestic product, well above EU rules requiring deficits to be kept to less than 3.0 percent.

Tremonti, who was economy minister at the time, disputed the figures.

"My feeling is that the deficit was 2.4 percent and not 4.4 percent, but that's debatable, it's in the past," he said.

He said that tax cuts promised during the recent election campaign would be "entirely covered," while also refusing to say how exactly they would be financed.

Tremonti also refused to speak about the European Commission's doubts that a state loan for ailing airline Alitalia met EU public aid rules, saying: "I've only been a minister for 82 hours."

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