Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement and League parties were yesterday to seek the backing of Italian President Sergio Mattarella for a prime minister to lead a government whose plans to jack up spending were roiling financial markets.
Eleven weeks after an inconclusive election, the rival parties are poised to put forward a prime minister whose program — agreed last week — calls for billions of euros in tax cuts, additional spending on welfare for the poor and a roll-back of pension reforms.
While the premier’s name has not been confirmed, Italian media have said that the leading candidate is a little-known university professor, Giuseppe Conte, who is not a lawmaker, but was proposed as a possible minister by Five Star before the vote.
Mattarella has the final say on who becomes premier. If he should give his blessing after the meetings, which was to start at 4:30pm, the parties could rapidly put together a Cabinet and hold confidence votes in parliament later this week.
Italian bond yields yesterday rose sharply on fears the government would go on a spending spree that would increase an already huge debt pile — worth more than 130 percent of the country’s annual output — and put it on a collision course with EU fiscal rules.
Markets were also hammered last week when the two parties presented their government plans. However, Italians appear to favor the tie-up.
About 60 percent of Italians are in favor of a Five Star/League coalition government, a Demos & Pi poll showed on Sunday.
More than 80 percent of Five Star and League voters would back it, the poll said.
The 54-year-old Conte was put forward before the election as Five Star’s possible pick as Italian minister of public administration. He is seen as a compromise candidate, a technocrat who could balance the demands of the rival parties.
Conte has worked as a lawyer, as well as an academic, and has studied for brief spells at Yale, New York University, Cambridge and other foreign universities.
Although not in the top post, Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio and League head Matteo Salvini are seen in the Cabinet, newspapers said.
Di Maio is tipped to become the minister of labor and welfare, to ensure the passage of the movement’s cornerstone election promise, a universal income for the poor.
Salvini is seen taking over the Ministry of the Interior, which handles immigration issues. The arrival of more than 600,000 boat migrants on Italian shores over four years fueled the anti-immigrant League’s popularity, catapulting it over former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia on the right.
More than one name circulated for the key Ministry of Economy and Finance portfolio.
Paolo Savona, an 81-year-old economist and former Italian minister of industry, commerce and artisanship, was mentioned the most, but Salvini’s top adviser, Giancarlo Giorgetti, could also get the job, newspapers said.
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