Matteo Renzi, Italy’s prime minister, said the eurozone’s third-largest economy was on track to hit its EU budget targets this year despite falling back into recession in the second quarter. In a pugnacious interview with the Financial Times, he also defended the speed at which his reforms are moving.

The 39-year-old former mayor of Florence, speaking in the premier’s office in Rome, rejected suggestions made by European Central Bank president Mario Draghi this week that the EU should intervene in countries where reforms were not being implemented fast enough to spur economic growth.

“I agree with Draghi when he says that Italy needs to make reforms but how we are going to do them I will decide, not the troika [the EU, IMF and ECB], not the ECB, not the European Commission,” he said. “I will do the reforms myself because Italy does not need someone else to explain what to do.”