With New Cabinet, Italy’s Head-Spinning Political Turmoil Ends, for Now

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/world/europe/italy-conte-cabinet.html

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ROME — Announcing his new cabinet on Wednesday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy ended what news reports here had called “the craziest crisis in the world,” brought on by the sudden collapse of the country’s government last month when one of his coalition partners pulled its support.

Mr. Conte appeared to be out of power, but he prevailed after feverish negotiations to cobble together a new majority and avoid early elections — and the likely consolidation of power by Italy’s popular hard-right leader, Matteo Salvini, who had broken with Mr. Conte.

On Wednesday, Mr. Conte presented his freshly minted cabinet to President Sergio Mattarella. It was a repeat performance for Mr. Conte, who first became prime minister 14 months ago as the leader of a populist coalition, including Mr. Salvini’s League party and the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, that sent shivers through the European establishment.

In his new coalition, Five Star is flanked by the center-left Democratic Party — sworn enemies turned unlikely bedfellows — as well as the small, left-leaning Free and Equal party.

In the previous cabinet, Mr. Conte was seconded by two powerful deputy prime ministers, Mr. Salvini, who was also the interior minister; and Luigi Di Maio, the political leader of the Five Star Movement, who was also labor minister.

Mr. Conte will operate solo now, with Mr. Di Maio as foreign minister. The position of interior minister, which Mr. Salvini used as a campaigning platform, has been handed to Luciana Lamorgese, a nonpolitical appointee who is a former prefect of Milan.

Italy’s sluggish economy and ballooning national debt will now be the purview of Roberto Gualtieri of the Democratic Party, the chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, and a member of the Brexit Steering Group. His predecessor, the respected economist Giovanni Tria, frequently found himself in the cross hairs of the two deputy ministers when he did not accede to their spending demands.

Mr. Gualtieri’s appointment seemed to signal the new government’s desire to strengthen its international image, after a year of flouting the European Union’s budgetary restrictions. Italy narrowly escaped sanction procedures this summer after pledging to reduce public spending.

In a similar vein, the appointment of Enzo Amendola, a former under secretary of foreign affairs, as minister for European affairs, sends “strong signals” that there will be a “course correction” in Italy’s relations with the European Union, said Paolo Magri, the director of the Italian Institute for International Political Studies in Milan.

Mr. Magri said he did not expect major shifts on Italian demands for more financial flexibility, and more solidarity from Europe on migration. “The need to force European rules when it comes to finances and migration exists, and will remain, because these issues won’t disappear tomorrow,” he said. But, he added, “I expect less confrontation and more alliances.”

Of the 21 ministers, seven are women, 10 are from Five Star, nine are Democrats, and the health minister, Roberto Speranza, represents the Free and Equal party.

The new government has been jokingly nicknamed MaZinga, a Japanese anime series that had a huge following in Italy in the late 1970s, a portmanteau of the last names of Mr. Di Maio and Nicola Zingaretti, the Democratic Party leader, who set aside their differences to avert snap elections.

The Democrats lost the 2018 elections, and the Five Star Movement — which became Italy’s top party with 33 percent of the votes in that election — saw its popularity halve in the European Parliament elections last May. The parties were largely eclipsed by Mr. Salvini’s nonstop campaigning and confrontational anti-migrant stance.

The government will be formally sworn in on Thursday morning, and must face a confidence vote, expected later this week, which is seen as a formality because the three parties control a majority of Parliament.

But the alliance was not a foregone conclusion, and critics question whether it will hold. Giuliano Ferrara, a political commentator who has been critical of Italy’s populist parties, gave a lukewarm endorsement in the daily Il Foglio, describing the coalition as a case of “well-meaning political prostitution to avert the implosion of democracy.”

The Democrats and Five Star do not see eye-to-eye on several issues, including foreign policy (Five Star officials have been friendly to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and have sought to strengthen ties with China) and migration, with Five Star having supported Mr. Salvini’s anti-migrant security decrees.

The two parties also disagree on whether to continue to build a high-speed train line between Italy and France. Five Star deputies voted against its construction last month, setting off a crisis that brought down the government.

The coalition’s immediate challenge will be forging an agreement on the budget, which must be passed by the end of the year.

For the moment, Mr. Salvini, who only weeks ago dominated Italy’s politics, has been relegated to voicing his displeasure from the sidelines.

On Wednesday, he took to social media to assert his party’s electoral primacy (the League took 34 percent of the vote in the European elections in May), and mock the new government’s chances at surviving. Mr. Salvini has called on his supporters to descend on Rome on Oct. 19 for a “day of Italian pride” against the new government.

“A government born between Paris and Berlin, and the fear of losing one’s seat,” Mr. Salvini said on Facebook on Wednesday. “They will not be able to escape the judgment of Italians for too long: we are ready, time is on our side, in the end we will win.”