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Italy’s Conte set to unveil new cabinet
ROME, Sept 4, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Italy’s incoming Prime Minister Giuseppe
Conte was expected Wednesday to present a new government of the anti-
establishment Five Star Movement and former centre-left foes after nearly a
month of crisis.
Conte is set to see President Sergio Mattarella and unveil his new cabinet
before the ministers are sworn in, bringing to an end a period of political
turmoil sparked last month by the collapse of the country’s populist
coalition.
Luigi di Maio, head of the Five Star Movement (M5S), is tipped to be
Italy’s next foreign minister, while Roberto Gualtieri from the centre-left
Democratic Party (PD) is frontrunner for the finance post in the eurozone’s
third largest economy.
Gualtieri, who has chaired the European Parliament’s committee on economic
and monetary affairs for the past five years, will have to move fast to deal
with Italy’s most pressing issue — the upcoming budget.
The M5S and PD have agreed to put aside their differences to prevent the
country heading to the polls after strongman Matteo Salvini pulled his far-
right League from government last month while MPs were at the beach.
The new coalition will have to be voted on in the lower and upper house of
parliament, possibly by the end of the week, to ensure it has a majority. The
small, left-wing Free and Equals party is expected to offer its support.
Conte — who had been a compromise prime minister for the League-M5S
coalition — will continue in the top job.
Italian markets have welcomed the incoming government, with Milan’s FTSE
Mib up nearly 1.7 percent Wednesday.
The spread between Italy’s bond yields and those of rock-solid Germany also
narrowed to 146 from 158, indicating investor confidence over the political
outlook.
– ‘Tricky’ –
But the road to a deal has been rocky, with bickering over posts and the
government programme, and political observers have warned the nascent
coalition may not last until the end of the legislature in 2023.
The country has form for rapid political turnover: Conte’s new government
will be the 67th in Italy in just 73 years.
“Governing will be trickier than agreeing a coalition,” Berenberg economist
Florian Hense said in a note.
“The upstart Five Stars have been the bane of the established PD for the
past six years. Conte’s ability to broker compromises between the parties
will be even more crucial than it was for his previous coalition,” he said.
The incoming government’s first challenge will be submitting the 2020
budget to parliament by the end of September, and then to Brussels by October
15.
It will need to find over 20 billion euros ($22 billion) in savings to
comply with EU rules and avoid a rise in VAT which would hit the country’s
poorest the hardest and could see debt-laden Italy slide back into recession.
The outgoing government quarrelled bitterly with the European Commission
over its big-spending plans, but analysts said the new M5S-PD tie-up was
expected to strike a more conciliatory tone and may therefore win some
flexibility.
Hense damned the new team with faint praise, saying it was “unlikely to
implement the serious pro-growth structural reforms that Italy needs in the
long run. But it probably will not make the situation worse.”
The other hot-button issue is immigration, a highly-charged subject which
became Salvini’s obsession as interior minister, with his hardline approach
to charity rescue vessels sending his popularity soaring but horrifying his
critics.
Conte is reported to want to keep the interior minister post for someone
not affiliated to either political party, with the frontrunner for the job
tipped to be Luciana Lamorgese, a former Milan prefect who also has
experience as interior minister’s cabinet chief.
BSS/AFP/RY/1748 hrs