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Italy set for caretaker government if last-ditch talks fail

President Sergio Mattarella will try once again on Monday to broker an agreement to form a viable government two months after Italy's inconclusive elections, following threats to name a team of technocrats instead.

Published: 7 May 2018 09:07 CEST
Italy set for caretaker government if last-ditch talks fail
Journalists waiting at the presidential palace, where talks to form Italy's new government are ongoing. Photo: Fabio Frustaci/AFP

The March 4th polls left a right-wing coalition led by the far-right League party in the driver's seat with 37 percent of the vote.

Seeking to ward off the prospect of a caretaker cabinet, League leader Matteo Salvini on Friday proposed going into a temporary government with the second-placed Five Star Movement (M5S) until December. This would give parliament time to pass a new electoral reform and adopt next year's budget for the eurozone's third-largest economy. He said fresh elections could then be held early next year.

The anti-establishment M5S, led by Luigi Di Maio, garnered 32 percent in the election, while the leftist Democratic Party won 19 percent.

The three parties will be first in line to speak to Mattarella, followed by smaller parties and the two speakers of parliament.

Di Maio said Sunday that he would forgo the premiership as a gesture to the League.

“If we really have to shake things up… I say to Salvini, 'Let's pick a head of government together',” Di Maio said on a TV talk show.

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Silvio Berlusconi, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio depicted as Caravaggio's Cardsharps in Rome graffiti. Photo: Fanny Carrier/AFP

But the League, whose coalition includes Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, remains at loggerheads with M5S over the flamboyant former prime minister's possible role. Di Maio has demanded that Salvini dump the 81-year-old media magnate, whom the M5S regards as the symbol of political corruption, but Salvini insists he will not break up a coalition.

Officials of the right-wing coalition met Sunday evening in Rome to hammer out a joint strategy.

Several have demanded that Mattarella designate Salvini as prime minister and allow him to find the few dozen MPs needed from smaller parties to form a majority in parliament. But press reports say Mattarella wants guarantees.

He is expected to name a caretaker government, similar to that of economist Mario Monti from 2011 to 2013, that would restore Italy's role on the world stage and run the country at least until the 2019 budget is passed. He is thought to be looking for a neutral but competent figure, perhaps a woman, with press speculation running wild.

But both the League and M5S are dead set against such an alternative, with Di Maio saying he would support fresh elections as soon as June or July.

Lina Palmerini, analyst at the business daily Il Sole 24 Ore, said Mattarella has few options, warning: “If parliament rejects the president's government, the situation will be very difficult.”

Pollster Lorenzo Pregliasco said voter surveys suggested new elections would not change the balance of forces. “No one will win a majority.” 

READ ALSO: The Local's introductory guide to Italian politics

By Fanny Carrier

 

EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Published: 28 April 2024 15:54 CEST
Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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