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Italy’s parties given 24 hours for make-or-break coalition talks

President Sergio Mattarella has given Italy's divided political parties 24 hours to try to reach a deal on a new government before he appoints a caretaker cabinet.

Published: 9 May 2018 14:27 CEST
Updated: 9 May 2018 17:44 CEST
Italy's parties given 24 hours for make-or-break coalition talks
President Sergio Mattarella is giving Italy's parties one last shot at forming a government. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

Italy's two main factions, the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and right-wing populist League, requested the last-minute extension after their leaders met on Wednesday morning, the president's statement said.

“The Five Star Movement and the League have informed the president that they are in talks to try and come to a possible government accord and that they need 24 hours to develop this initiative,” it said. 

Mattarella had been preparing to name a “neutral” cabinet to oversee Italy's most pressing matters of government while preparing the country for new elections to break the deadlock created by an inconclusive vote in March.

Yet the two biggest winners from that election now look like they could be approaching a deal.

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Matteo Salvini with his coalition partners at the presidential palace. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

Until now the sticking point had been Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister whose Forza Italia party is a junior partner in a right-wing alliance led by the League. The M5S, which was founded in opposition to the political establishment epitomized by Berlusconi, offered to work with the League on the condition that it drop Forza Italia.

Neither the M5S, which won nearly 33 percent of the vote, nor the League's alliance, which got 37 percent, have the numbers to govern alone. 

While League leader Matteo Salvini has insisted he won't drop his partners and Berlusconi has compared the M5S to the Nazis, reports on Wednesday said the parties may be approaching a compromise that would see Forza Italia take a back seat. 

According to Italian media, Salvini's main political allies are exerting strong pressure on Berlusconi to give his approval to an Five Star-League government, while his own Forza Italia party remains deeply divided on the issue.The regional governor of Italy's northern Liguria region, Giovanni Toti, who holds a lot of clout within Forza Italia, suggested on Wednesday that his party could exercise a “benevolent abstention” in the face of a coalition.  

The M5S, too, appears to have softened its stance, with leader Luigi Di Maio telling journalists: “There's not a veto on Berlusconi, just willingness to talk to the League. Full stop.”


Luigi Di Maio speaks to the press after Monday's meetings. Photo: Tiziana Fabi/AFP

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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