Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Rome ceremony caps new populist coalition
New leaders vow to boot migrants in ‘Italy first’ agenda
ROME — Italy’s president swore in western Europe’s first populist government Friday, featuring a mix of anti-establishment and right-wing ministers who have promised an “Italy first” agenda that has alarmed Europe’s political establishment.
The continent’s euroskeptic politicians cheered the birth of the new government coalition of the 5-Star Movement and the right-wing League party. Milan’s stock market closed up 1.5 percent Friday after a last-minute deal Thursday averted the threat of an early election that could have turned into a referendum on whether Italy should ditch the shared euro currency.
President Sergio Mattarella, who negotiated through three months of political deadlock to find a workable government, presided over the ceremony in the Quirinale Palace. Eighteen ministers — five of them women — took the oath of office, pledging to observe Italy’s Constitution and work in the interests of the nation.
The ministers feature a mix of 5-Star and League loyalists and a political neophyte in the form of Premier Giuseppe Conte, who was still teaching his law classes at the university in Florence up until Thursday.
The key economy ministry went to a mainstream economist, Giovanni Tria, who is close to the centerright Forza Italia party of ex-Premier Silvio Berlusconi. Mattarella had vetoed the 5-Star-League’s first proposed candidate for the post because of his euroskeptic views.
The ceremony Friday afternoon capped a rollercoaster week of political and financial turmoil that saw stock markets around the world plunge and Italy’s borrowing rates soar on the threat of a new election in Europe’s third-largest economy.
It also came on the eve of the nation’s Republic Day holiday, the day in 1946 when Italy abolished the monarchy and gave birth to the First Republic.
After the ceremony, Conte headed to the premier’s office to formally take the reins — and a symbolic little bell — from ex-Premier Paolo Gentiloni.
Conte’s deputy premiers are his two more seasoned political masters: 5-Star leader Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, head of the League. Di Maio, who pledged to give needy Italians a basic income, takes over as economic development minister, while Salvini heads the interior ministry, the key position to enforce his pledge to expel migrants.
After the swearing-in, Salvini told reporters his first order of business would be to “reduce the arrivals and increase the expulsions” of migrants, as well as the costs associated with their care.