New Government Wins Confidence Vote

Following approval by President Sergio Mattarella on Friday, Prime Minister designate Giuseppe Conte and his cabinet undertook the last step towards confirmation of the proposed 5-StarMovement/ League government on Tuesday and Wednesday, when it received the absolute majority of votes (the so called ‘confidence vote’) in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.

This gives 53-year-old Giuseppe Conte a mandate to carry out the program of his coalition's self designated “government of change”. In the meantime, negotiations to appoint the so called “permanent commission’, i.e. the new government’s undersecretaries and vice-ministers are on going.

During his welcome speech in the Senate, Conte made clear that “leaving the Eurozone is out of question, but we will not give up questioning EU economic policy’ and stated that ending illegal immigration and strengthening ties with Russia are two of the new government’s priorities.

The next day, in the Chamber of Deputies, Conte went through each priority of the government's program, including tax cuts, benefit hikes and justice reform. At the end of his speech, the Democratic Party’s spokesperson Graziano Delrio expressed severe disapproval of the new Prime Minister, inviting Conte, a lawyer and professor with no political or administrative experience, ‘to write the government program from scratch by himself’ and wishing he would not become a ‘puppet in the hands of his two coalition partners’ (during his speech, Conte had read multiple times from his notes and asked 5-Star-Movement’s Luigi Di Maio sitting next to him whether he should mention certain points).

Minister of Industry and Labor Luigi Di Maio and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte in the Chamber of Deputies. Source: Corriere della Sera)

International media including Reuters, France 24, The Guardian and The Washington Post widely reported on the news, mostly the fact that the new government is "populist", while U.S. media company Bloomberg specifically focused on EU budget policy and the Five-Star-Movement and League’s argument that Italy ‘gets a raw deal from the EU’.

Interestingly, British online newspaper The Independent reported on newly appointed Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s argument with prominent Italian football player Mario Balotelli. Originally from Africa, Balotelli stated that Italy needs to do more to integrate migrants from Africa and denounced the unfairness of the fact that, despite having been born and raised in Italy by migrant parents, Italian law prevented him from becoming an Italian citizen until he turned 18. The debate follows Salvini’s first official statement as Interior Minister that Italy has become ‘Europe’s refugee camp’ and that ‘there is not enough housing and work for Italians, let alone half the continent of Africa." (see our previous article)

On Friday and Sunday Conte will make his debut in international politics joining the G7 summit in Canada.