Italy’s new PM vows radical change in debut Parliament speech
ROME — Italy’s new prime minister promised on Tuesday to bring radical change to the country, including more generous welfare and a crackdown on immigration, as the two party bosses who hold the keys to his anti-establishment government nodded their approval.
Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte addressed the Senate, flanked by the leaders of two formerly fringe parties that shoved aside mainstream groups at an election in March to form a coalition with littleknown law expert Conte as its head.
“The truth is that we have created a radical change and we’re proud of it,” Conte said in his maiden speech to parliament, delivered in the upper house Senate, before winning a vote of confidence for his policy program.
The government, backed by the 5-Star Movement, founded nine years ago as a grassroots protest group, and the rightwing League, won the vote by 171-117 in the 320-seat Senate.
The coalition has a larger majority in the lower house, which is due to vote on Wednesday. It will then be fully empowered.
Conte, 53, spoke as 5-Star leader Luigi di Maio and League chief Matteo Salvini sat beside him, nodding their approval as the urbane law professor ticked off all the main elements of a policy agenda the party leaders had finalized days before.
Di Maio is labor and industry minister in Conte’s government and Salvini is interior minister. Their presence has raised doubts about whether Conte, a political novice, can put his own stamp on the government’s agenda.
In his 72-minute speech, Conte said priorities would include tackling social hardship through the introduction of a universal income — a 5-Star election promise — and to stem an influx of illegal immigrants, a pivotal policy of the League.
Biggest debt burden
In the debate after the speech, ex-premier Mario Monti said Italy risked being put under supervision of the European Central Bank, European Commission and International Monetary Fund unless the government carefully manages the public accounts.
Italy already has the biggest debt burden of major eurozone nations at about 130 percent of economic output. Economists estimate the coalition’s policy agenda would add tens of billions of euros to annual spending.
“We want to reduce the public debt, but we want to do it by increasing our wealth, not with austerity that, in recent years, has helped to make it grow,” Conte said. Debt was “fully sustainable today”, and key to reducing it was economic growth.
Conte stressed that “Europe is our home” and, despite the coalition’s plan to improve Russian ties, restated commitments to both NATO and Italy’s alliance with the United States.
On immigration, a major election issue after an influx of hundreds of thousands of mostly African asylum-seekers, Conte said the government would end “the immigration business”.
League leader Salvini has pledged Italy will no longer be “Europe’s refugee camp”.