Mario Draghi for PM? Italy’s president intervenes after government crisis talks fail

Italy's president is expected on Wednesday to ask former head of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi to take over as prime minister following the collapse of the government.

Published: 2 February 2021 21:32 CET
Updated: 3 February 2021 08:24 CET

Mario Draghi for PM? Italy's president intervenes after government crisis talks fail

Italian President Sergio Mattarella addresses the media on Tuesday evening at the presidential palace. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/POOL/AFP

President Sergio Mattarella's spokesman said he had asked Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank, to meet with him for talks on Wednesday, after ruling parties failed to agree on a new government.

The announcement came after Italy's ruling parties missed a deadline to reach an agreement on Tuesday, meaning talks on potentially forming a new government had failed.

“At present, there remain differences, in light of which I have not recorded a unanimous willingness to give life to a majority,” said House Speaker Roberto Fico, after meeting with President Sergio Mattarella.

Italy is currently without a prime minister amid a political crisis which has deepened since Conte resigned last week.

Mattarella had given the ruling coalition parties until Tuesday to patch things up with former premier Matteo Renzi's Italia Viva party, which sparked the crisis by withdrawing support.

But talks failed, and the president said he was left with only two viable options.

He ruled out snap elections because of the pandemic, and instead said he would help form a “high-profile government that should not identify itself with any political formula”.

Mattarella has stressed the urgency of creating a stable government to manage the pandemic, which hit Italy first among European nations and has been devastating.

Alongside the ever-mounting death toll, the economy shrank 8.9 percent in 2020 – the biggest contraction since the end of World War II.

Draghi is thought to be Matteo Renzi's choice for PM.

Italy's La Stampa newspaper also reported on Sunday that Mattarella was considering Draghi for the prime ministerial role.

However, Mattarella's office promptly denied this, saying there had been no contact between them.

So far, there has been no comment from Draghi, who hasn't been seen much in the public eye since 2019.

PROFILE: Italian president Sergio Mattarella, the country's 'political referee'

Conte had drawn up a 220-billion-euro ($240 billion) recovery plan using the EU funds, but Renzi accused him of using it for vote-winning handouts, rather than addressing long-term structural issues.

The lack of political leadership in recent weeks had sparked concerns about whether Rome could meet the April deadline to submit its spending plans to Brussels.

But Draghi, dubbed “Super Mario”, has long been cited by political watchers as the man to see Italy through the coming months.

“Thank you president!” tweeted the EU's economy commissioner, former Italian prime minister Paolo Gentiloni, after Mattarella announced his plans.

Lorenzo Castellani, a political expert at Rome's Luiss University, said he believed a Draghi-led government would be highly technocratic.

“The government programme will be 99 percent occupied by the pandemic and the recovery fund,” he told AFP, adding that it would likely find support among lawmakers.

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The strike comes after Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama — who is close to Meloni — called a top RAI editor to complain about a television report into Italy’s controversial migration deal with his country.

The Usigrai trade union called the strike from May 6 to May 7 saying talks with management had failed to address their concerns.

It cited numerous issues, including staff shortages and contract issues, but in first place was “the suffocating control over journalistic work, with the attempt to reduce RAI to a megaphone for the government”.

It had already used that phrase to object to what critics say is the increasing influence over RAI by figures close to Prime Minister Meloni, who leads Italy’s most right-wing government since World War II.

However, another union of RAI journalists, Unirai, said they would not join what they called a “political” strike, defending the return to “pluralism” at the broadcaster.

Funded in part by a licence fee and with top managers long chosen by politicians, RAI’s independence has always been an issue of debate.

But the arrival in power of Meloni — leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, who formed a coalition with Matteo Salvini’s far-right League party and the late Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing Forza Italia — redoubled concerns.

Tensions erupted at the weekend amid accusations RAI censored a speech by a leading writer criticising Meloni ahead of Liberation Day on April 25, when Italians mark the defeat of Fascism and the Nazis at the end of World War II.

Both RAI’s management and Meloni have denied censorship, and the premier posted the text of the monologue on her social media.

In another twist, Albania’s premier confirmed Thursday he called senior RAI editor Paolo Corsini about an TV report on Sunday into Italy’s plans to build two migration processing centres on Albanian territory.

Rama told La Stampa newspaper the report was “biased” and contained “lies” — adding that he had not raised the issue with Meloni.

The “Report” programme claimed the costs of migrant centres, which are under construction, were already “out of control” and raised questions about criminals benefiting from the project.