Italy’s president opens government talks after PM Giuseppe Conte resigns
- Conte stepped down after losing a parliamentary majority but is hoping to return at the head of a strengthened government
- The head of state is set to meet the presidents of both parliamentary chambers before talks on Thursday and Friday with party leaders
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Conte stepped down on Tuesday after divisions in the ruling coalition left him without a parliamentary majority but is hoping to return at the head of a strengthened government.
President Sergio Mattarella, the ultimate arbiter of Italian politics, asked Conte to stay on while he establishes if this is viable – or if someone else should take over.
Italian PM Conte resigns in bid to seek new government
The head of state is set to meet the presidents of both parliamentary chambers before talks on Thursday and Friday with party leaders.
Italy was the first European country to face the full force of the pandemic and has since suffered badly, with the economy plunged into recession and deaths still rising by around 400 a day. More than 86,000 people have died.
Parts of the country remain under partial lockdown and the vaccination programme has slowed – a problem the government has blamed on delays in deliveries from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
The current ruling parties, including the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) and the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), are hoping to stay in office and avoid snap elections.
“With a government that has resigned, everything will be slower and more difficult,” warned Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio, one of the leaders of M5S, the largest in parliament.
He urged lawmakers to get behind Conte, saying: “It is the moment of truth, in these hours we will know who defends and loves our nation and who only thinks of their own benefit.”
Opinion polls suggest that the opposition coalition, which includes Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s far-right League, will win power.
But forming a new government would mean working again with former premier Matteo Renzi’s Italia Viva party, which sparked the current crisis by leaving the coalition in a row over the handling of the pandemic.
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Conte, who cancelled a scheduled speech to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, said after his resignation that Italy required “a clear perspective and a government with a larger and safer majority”.
“My resignation serves this possibility: the formation of a new government that can offer a prospect of national salvation,” he wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
However, he acknowledged that he himself – a former law professor plucked from obscurity to lead a previous M5S-led government after the 2018 elections – may not necessarily be at the helm.
“The only thing that really matters, regardless of who will be called to lead Italy, is that the Republic can raise its head again,” he wrote.
