Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti has resigned from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's cabinet following a stormy meeting with coalition allies, a government source said yesterday.
His shock decision to quit the cabinet came after weeks of infighting within the coalition over economic policy that has threatened to tear apart the center-right administration.
The source said Berlusconi had decided to take over the economy portfolio on an interim basis just three days before EU finance ministers are due to gather in Brussels to discuss worries about Italy's growing budget deficit.
"Tremonti has resigned. The meeting tonight went badly," said the source, who declined to be named.
"Berlusconi will take over as economy minister for the time being," he said, adding that a cabinet meeting called for later yesterday to discuss Italy's budget problems had been cancelled. Sources said it would probably be held yesterday.
Tremonti left Berlusconi's Rome residence shortly after midnight and did not talk to reporters.
Tremonti is a member of Berlusconi's Forza Italia party and has been a central figure in his 3-year-old government, managing thus far to meet strict EU budget rules but failing to oversee a long-promised revival in Italy's persistently sluggish economy.
He and Berlusconi were "intertwined," so much so that his replacement "would be akin to an act of surrender by an already weakened premier," the newspaper Corriere della Sera wrote in a recent editorial amid speculation about his future.
Some coalition allies, especially the conservative National Alliance (AN) party, have viewed the powerful Tremonti with open suspicion, often criticizing him for not consulting more widely before announcing major economic decisions.
Roberto Calderoli, a leading figure in the coalition Northern League party, told reporters early on Saturday that Tremonti had not yet handed in an official resignation letter, but said that this would probably come shortly.
The populist League has previously defended the economy minister from AN attacks and has threatened on at least one occasion to quit the government should Tremonti go.
But Calderoli played down the prospects of a full-blown political crisis over the issue. "A government crisis?
"No, if you substitute a minister, there's no crisis," he said.
By contrast, one of the other coalition partners told Berlusconi late Friday that they would bring down the government if Tremonti stayed in office, said Calderoli, who was present at the meeting.
He did not name the party, but only hours earlier, deputy prime minister and AN leader Gianfranco Fini had said he would pull his forces out of the fractious government if economic policy didn't take a new direction.
Tremonti is the third senior minister to resign from the cabinet since Berlusconi took office in 2001 and his abrupt departure comes at a particularly delicate moment for Italy.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion