Romano Prodi, the leader of Italy's centre left opposition, said on Wednesday he would make the economy his "absolute priority" if he succeeds in ousting Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at elections next year.
Prodi, a former European Commission president who is leading in the opinion polls, said Italy needed to act urgently to pull itself out of recession and get its debt and deficit-laden public accounts under control.
"If we don't re-launch the economy immediately, the budget won't get back into shape," Prodi told reporters at the Foreign Press Club where he laid out his priorities for government.
A softly spoken economics professor, Prodi lacks Berlusconi's rabble-rousing oratory but he is the only person to beat him in an election - to head a short-lived government in 1996 - and many analysts say he is likely to do so again.
His decision to focus on the economy is unsurprising as growth halted during Berlusconi's term and it is now in decline, while the budget deficit has repeatedly broken EU limits.
Prodi said Italy's struggle to balance its books and lower its huge national debt was nothing new, but the country's industry was in far worse shape than when he was in power.
Italy's productivity has lagged far behind its euro zone partners' in recent years as unit labour costs have risen; manufacturing has been in recession for the last four years and exports have been losing market share since the mid-1990s.
"A first phase will be a correction of labour costs, and in a second phase working on schools and scientific research."
Prodi said an "active" immigration policy was also needed to supply Italy with the labour it needed to stimulate the economy, and he lambasted tighter immigration rules brought in by Berlusconi's government as "pure repression".
"Immigration is absolutely central for us as it is linked to getting an upturn in the economy ... to do this we need good immigration."
When asked which of two prominent European centre-left leaders he was most like, he opted for Spain's Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, rather than Britain's Tony Blair, due to what he saw as London's lack of commitment to the EU.
He slammed the centre right's "pathetic and sly" slide into euro-scepticism, a reference to Berlusconi's comments blaming the euro and EU budget restraints for hurting Italy's economy and a junior government party's call to quit the single currency.
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