• Immigration.Matteo Salvini celebrates his blockade in Lampedusa and defines Open Arms as a "hypocritical" and "unscrupulous" NGO
  • Italy.The parties fail to resolve the political crisis: no agreement on the date of the motion of censure against Conte

The Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, announced on Tuesday in the Senate his resignation as leader of the Government of Italy . Conte thus avoids submitting to the motion of censure requested by the Vice President and Interior Minister, Matteo Salvini, to force the fall of the Government and the advancement of the elections four years ahead of schedule. Conte will be received in the next hours at the Quirinal Palace by the President of the Republic , Sergio Mattarella, to formalize his resignation.

The political crisis began on August 8 when Matteo Salvini, among mojitos and rallies on the Italian beaches , announced that he was withdrawing his support for the prime minister and demanded the immediate call for early elections, the Government coalition formed by his party and the Movement was finalized Five stars. The excuse of the League leader was the lack of agreement with his allies on key issues such as taxes or infrastructure. The drop that filled the glass, according to the Vice President of the Government, was the rejection of the 'grillinos' to the construction of the high-speed network between France and Italy claiming environmental impacts. But nobody escapes the weight that the electoral polls and the recent elections to the European Parliament, which confirmed his party as the first political force in Italy, had in the Salvini order .

From now on an uncertain future opens in Italian politics. The one in charge of undoing this mess will once again be the president of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella. The head of state will begin in the coming days a round of contacts with the main political parties to know if there is another possible majority that can give continuity to a government the rest of the legislature. If it were not possible to form a new Government , Mattarella would have no choice but to call early elections that would be expected to take place between the end of October and the beginning of November, thus fulfilling Salvini's will.

This hypothesis, however, is the least desired by the Quirinal since it would imply a return to the polls on the same dates that Rome must submit to the EU the budgets for the next year and avoid an increase in VAT , which would be inevitable if not the accounts were approved before the end of the year . To this is added that no party, except the League and the far-right Brothers of Italy, want an early return to the vote.

Another option that seemed impossible until a few days ago and is taking force is a possible agreement between the Five Star Movement and the Democratic Party that allows the legislature to be completed. If in the elections of March of last year the then the secretary of the party and former Prime Minister Matteo Renz i was one of the strongest detractors of a pact with the 'grillinos' , today the Florentine senator has become the greatest supporter within of his party to sign an agreement with them for institutional "responsibility" and to get Salvini out of power.

M5E and PD were respectively the two most voted parties in last year's elections so they would have a sufficient majority to govern in coalition. A hypothesis that however divides both formations. In PD Matteo Renzi has a good number of faithful who could accompany him in his ambition to reach power again but there is no lack of critical voices from those who consider the party founded by Beppe Grillo as dangerous . After all, it is the 'grillinos' who are responsible for the bleeding of votes suffered by the PD in the last elections. While the center-left could face a new split, from the M5E they insist they will never rule with Renzi and the old PD guard. But the party is now led by Nicola Zingaretti, who very cleverly avoided ruling on a possible deal with the 'grillinos'. At the moment, in this game of poker in which the future of Italian politics is played, nobody wants to discover their cards.

The last ace in Mattarella's sleeve to avoid early elections is the formation of a technical government that approves budgets and allows the return to the polls to be delayed at least until the spring of next year. But for this the hypothetical executive need to have the support of both houses of Parliament. And at the moment it seems far away that both the League and the Five Star Movement accept the nth government formed by technocrats.

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  • Italy
  • Matteo Renzi
  • Sergio Mattarella
  • Matteo Salvini
  • Beppe Grillo

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