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Giuseppe Conte promises to unveil Italy’s new cabinet by Wednesday

Italy's premier-designate Giuseppe Conte said on Sunday he intended to present his new coalition cabinet by Wednesday at the latest, as he races to resolve the political crisis in the eurozone's third largest economy.

Published: 2 September 2019 09:53 CEST
Giuseppe Conte promises to unveil Italy's new cabinet by Wednesday
Giuseppe Conte arrives for talks at the presidential palace. Photo: Quirinale Press Office/AFP

“At the start of next week — not Monday, but Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest — we need to be able to finish” negotiations between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the centre-left Democratic Party, he said.

At that point Conte will present his cabinet line-up and government programme to Italy's President Sergio Mattarella. Conte and his new ministers would then be expected to be sworn in on Thursday, before facing a parliament vote on Friday.

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After public spats between the parties — who until recently were sworn enemies — there was now a “good working atmosphere”, Conte told the Fatto Quotidiano daily via video link.

The Five Star Movement (M5S) and Democratic Party (PD) have agreed to form a new coalition to stave off new elections after hardline Matteo Salvini, head of the hard-right League, pulled the plug on the government earlier this month.

Tensions remain, however. There have been persistent reports that M5S head Luigi Di Maio has threatened to pull out of the deal should he not get the deputy prime minister job. Conte said Sunday he was concentrated on policies rather than posts, while the PD suggested the deputy prime minister post should be scrapped to take it out of the equation.

Di Maio loyalists accused the centre-left of trying to cut their leader off at the knees. But on Saturday, the M5S chief was given a rare public ticking off by the Movement's founder, comic Beppe Grillo. In a video on his blog, he said he was “exhausted” by the talk of who-gets-what and the M5S's insistence that its 20-point plan be respected by the PD. 

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Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio arrives for talks at the Quirinal presidential palace in Rome on August 28. Photo: Andreas Solaro/AFP

'Extraordinary moment of change'

Grillo lamented “this agonising… this lack of humour, of fun, of exhilaration”, urging the parties in a video on his blog to “sit down at a table and be elated because [you] belong to this extraordinary moment of change”.

Conte said he “shared” Grillo's feelings, while PD leader Nicola Zingaretti agreed, saying “let's change everything, and respect one another”.

As far as the cabinet posts go, Conte said he would invite the M5S and PD to give him suggestions — rather than make demands — “so I can choose the best team”. He insisted the coalition would have a “single shared programme” where it would be difficult to distinguish which measures were championed by which party — a bipolarity which plagued the outgoing League-M5S coalition.

PROFILE: Italy's PM Conte, the 'Mr Nobody' who found his voice

Conte, a softly-spoken lawyer who was chosen as a compromise pick for prime minister after last year's general election, also denied he was the Movement's man, insisting he was neutral.

“I am not a member of the Five Star Movement, I do not participate in meetings of the leadership group, I have never met the parliamentary groups, to call me M5S seems inappropriate to me,” he said. However, he admitted “I am close to them, I have known them a long time, I work well with the M5S”.

When he addressed the nation as premier-designate on Thursday, Conte conspicuously avoided mentioning a hot-button issue that could still see the deal collapse: migration.

The M5S has said it has no regrets about its work done with Salvini, including a controversial anti-immigrant law targeting charity ships that save migrants in the Mediterranean. The PD however, has become increasingly vocal about wanting it altered or scrapped. It has cited the plight of the Italian Mare Jonio rescue ship, currently stuck at sea after Salvini banned it from entering national waters.

“The Mare Jonio case confirms we need to change everything on immigration in Italy,” Zingaretti tweeted on Sunday. 

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni says will 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 says will 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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