Italy’s new pro-EU government wins vote, Salvini now in opposition

Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte’s new pro-Europe government won a final confidence vote on Tuesday night in the Senate, clearing a key hurdle as it prepares to draft a painful budget law that risks splitting the already shaky coalition.

After easily clinching a first confidence vote Monday in the lower Chamber of Deputies, Conte successfully sought support in the Senate, where his coalition commands a slimmer majority.

He won 169 to 133.

Five senators abstained, including at least one apiece from the two main parties in the new coalition: the populist 5-Star Movement and the center-left Democrats.

The two parties have long been archrivals. But they banded together, along with a tiny leftwing party, to forge a coalition that shut out of power Matteo Salvini, the leader of the rightwing League party, which has been soaring in popularity.

The next challenge comes quickly. The Italian government must get to work on the painful task of drafting a budget law, which must be approved by Parliament by the end of the year.

The government hopes the new budget can avert a planned 23 billion euro sales tax hike that would prove very unpopular with voters and would further hurt Italy’s weak economy.

In the Senate debate, Salvini blamed Conte for having “betrayed Italians” for assembling a new coalition that deprived him of an early election that he had hoped would launch himself into the premiership.

Salvini’s League now sits in opposition, after he pulled the plug on the previous coalition between the League and the 5Stars, triggering a political crisis that backfired and led to the creation of Conte’s new cabinet.

“I’m proud of not being part of this government,” Salvini said in a heated Senate speech.

“Sooner or later, Italians will head back to the polls. Whoever fears their judgment has a guilty conscience.”