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Nearly half of all Italian voters want Giuseppe Conte to remain PM, poll finds

Some 45 per cent of Italian voters want Giuseppe Conte to stay on as prime minister, an opinion poll suggested Thursday, after his resignation deepened the country's political crisis.

Published: 28 January 2021 16:29 CET
Nearly half of all Italian voters want Giuseppe Conte to remain PM, poll finds
Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

The IXE survey showed that 26 percent favoured new elections, while 11 percent would like the coalition government to stay in place, but under another prime minister.

EXPLAINED: Why has Italy's prime minister resigned and what happens now?

A further seven percent of respondents said they would rather have a new centre-right coalition in power, while 11 per cent of those polled had no opinion.

Conte was also confirmed as the country's most popular politician, with 52 per cent of respondents expressing confidence in him.

The prime minister resigned on Tuesday after former premier Matteo Renzi withdrew his small Italia Viva party from the coalition government, leaving it short of a majority in the Senate.

Since Wednesday, President Sergio Mattarella has been in talks with party leaders to seek a way out.

Talks are scheduled to run until Friday.

Talks on saving the government are being held at the Quirinale presidential palace in Rome. Photo: AFP

The main parties behind the outgoing government – the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) – have thrown their support behind Conte.

Conte hopes Mattarella will ask him to form a new government, but this depends on whether he can assemble a new ruling coalition.

PROFILE: Italy's Giuseppe Conte, from 'populist puppet' to political survivor

But to keep his job, Conte either needs to make up with Renzi or win over a few opposition senators to get his majority back.

The crisis has left Italy rudderless in the middle of a coronavirus pandemic that has claimed almost 87,000 lives and caused an unprecedented recession.

Gregorio De Falco, an independent senator who has offered to support a new Conte-led cabinet, stressed the urgency of ending the political stalemate.

“The country is going through a very dangerous health emergency and a devastating economic crisis. We need to act quickly,” he said after meeting Mattarella.

The head of state was due to meet the main players of the political crisis, including the M5S, the PD, Renzi and the centre-right opposition parties, on Thursday and Friday.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Conte gave witness testimony in a case against anti-immigration League party leader Matteo Salvini, who is accused of illegally detaining migrants at sea while interior minister.

Despite the ongoing political crisis, Conte appeared before a judge seeking to decide whether Salvini, who is no longer in government, should face trial.

Member comments

  1. Salvini to face trail ,pmsl you just could not make this stuff up. Have these idiots got nothing better to do apart from waste money?

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Why Italy is fighting EU plans to limit vehicle emissions

Italy's government is leading a revolt against an EU plan for a green car transition, vowing to protect the automotive industry in a country still strongly attached to the combustion engine - despite the impact of climate change.

Published: 25 May 2023 10:07 CEST
Why Italy is fighting EU plans to limit vehicle emissions

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right coalition, which came into office last October, tried and failed to block EU plans to ban the sale of new cars running on fossil fuels by 2035, which her predecessor Mario Draghi had supported.

But this week the government took the fight to planned ‘Euro 7’ standards on pollutants, joining with seven other EU member states – including France and Poland – to demand Brussels scrap limits due to come into force in July 2025.

READ ALSO: Why electric cars aren’t more popular in Italy

“Italy is showing the way, our positions are more and more widely shared,” claimed Enterprise Minister Adolfo Urso, a fervent proponent of national industry in the face of what he has called an “ideological vision” of climate change.

The EU plan “is clearly wrong and not even useful from an environmental point of view”, added Transport Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party, which shares power with Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy.

Salvini led the failed charge against the ban on internal combustion engines, branding it “madness” that would “destroy thousands of jobs for Italian workers” while he claimed it would benefit China, a leader in producing electric vehicles.

Electric car being charged

Photo by Gabriel BOUYS / AFP

Federico Spadini from Greenpeace Italy lamented that “environmental and climate questions are always relegated to second place”, blaming a “strong industrial lobby in Italy” in the automobile and energy sectors.

“None of the governments in recent years have been up to the environmental challenge,” he told AFP.

“Unfortunately, Italy is not known in Europe as climate champion. And it’s clear that with Meloni’s government, the situation has deteriorated,” he said.

Low demand

Jobs are a big factor. In 2022, Italy had nearly 270,000 direct or indirect employees in the automotive sector, which accounted for 5.2 percent of GDP.

The European Association of Automotive Suppliers (CLEPA) has warned that switching to all electric cars could lead to more than 60,000 job losses in Italy by 2035 for automobile suppliers alone.

READ ALSO: Italians and their cars are inseparable – will this ever change?

“Since Fiat was absorbed by Stellantis in 2021, Italy no longer has a large automobile industry, but it remains big in terms of components, which are all orientated towards traditional engines,” noted Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian Treasury.

For consumers too, the electric revolution has yet to arrive.

Italy has one of the highest car ownership rates in Europe: ranking fourth behind Liechtenstein, Iceland and Luxembourg with 670 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants, according to the latest Eurostat figures from 2020.

But sales of electric cars fell by 26.9 percent in 2022, to just 3.7 percent of the market, against 12.1 percent for the EU average.

Electric cars charge at a hub in central Milan on March 23, 2023. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

Subsidies to boost zero emissions vehicles fell flat, while Minister Urso has admitted that on infrastructure, “we are extremely behind”.

Italy has just 36,000 electric charging stations, compared to 90,000 for the Netherlands, a country the fraction of the size of Italy, he revealed.

READ ALSO: These are the most (and least) eco-friendly towns in Italy

“There is no enthusiasm for electric cars in Italy,” Felipe Munoz, an analyst with the automotive data company Jato Dynamics, told AFP.

“The offer is meagre, with just one model manufactured by national carmaker Fiat.”

In addition, “purchasing power is not very high, people cannot afford electric vehicles, which are expensive. So the demand is low, unlike in Nordic countries.”

Gerrit Marx, head of the Italian truck manufacturer Iveco, agrees.

“We risk turning into a big Cuba, with very old cars still driving around for years, because a part of the population will not be able to afford an electric model,” he said.

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