Italy’s president summons Conte for talks on forming govt

The anti-establishment 5-Stars and anti-immigrant League had proposed Conte as their compromise candidate for premier after inconclusive March 4 national elections led to a hung parliament. (Photo By: Presidenza della Repubblica, Public Domain)

ROME -Italy’s president summoned Giuseppe Contefor consultations Wednesday to see if the law professor tapped by the eurosceptic 5-Star Movement and League as their candidate for premier has what it takes to try to form a government.

After more than two months of political deadlock and market concerns that Europe’s third-largest economy is taking a populist plunge, President Sergio Mattarella’s office announced Conte had been called to a meeting in the afternoon.

Analysts expect Mattarella will go ahead and give Conte a mandate to try to form a government, which would then be subject to confidence votes in both houses of parliament.

The anti-establishment 5-Stars and anti-immigrant League had proposed Conte as their compromise candidate for premier after inconclusive March 4 national elections led to a hung parliament.

Immediately questions swirled about Conte’s qualifications, given he has no political experience and new information suggests he padded his resume with academic credentials at international universities where he never taught or enrolled.

Already, markets have been skittish in response to the 5-Star-League program, which includes a budget-busting basic income for needy Italians and a two-tier flat tax that is expected to add to Italy’s debt load, already Europe’s heaviest after Greece.

On Wednesday, European Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis warned Italy to rein its government debt, which is currently over 130 per cent of gross domestic product. The 19 members of the euro currency should keep public debt under 60 per cent of GDP and the budget deficit below 3 per cent of GDP.

Both 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio and League leader Matteo Salvini have stood by Conte and sought to reassure markets and Brussels, albeit with the caveat that Italians had voted in large numbers for a program that calls for a tougher approach to deporting migrants and improving dialogue with Russia.

“There’s no more time to lose, or Italy changes or we vote,” Salvini said on Facebook late Tuesday.

Even if Conte receives the mandate and forms a government that can win confidence votes, analysts predict a government of uneasy bedfellows won’t last the full five-year term of the legislature, and that elections in 2019 remain a possibility.

Outstanding questions for the near-term include Conte’s list of proposed Cabinet ministers, amid concerns in Brussels that the League-favoured candidate for economy minister, Paolo Savona, has expressed anti-euro tendencies in the past.

Political observers in Italy say a bigger, more immediate issue for Conte is persuading Mattarella he would have the independence to lead a coalition government composed of the 5-Stars and the League, and not just be an executor of the populists’ wishes.

The 5-Stars have suffered from the perception that their public officials are mere puppets of the movement’s brain trust, most visibly in Rome’s city hall. Six months after Virginia Raggi was elected mayor in 2016, 5-Star founder and comic Beppe Grillo stepped in to personally shake up her administration after it became mired in scandal, criminal investigations and resignations.