Mario Draghi, a respected economist who previously headed the European Central Bank, gathered sufficient support on Friday to form a government of national unity with broad support in Parliament in hopes of pulling the country out of the coronavirus crisis and the economic damage caused by the pandemic.
Mr. Draghi accepted the mandate of the President of Italy, Sergio Mattarella, to form a new cabinet and seek a vote of confidence in Parliament. But its rise has already reshaped the country’s fragmented political landscape.
The new government is expected to prioritize Italy’s vaccination campaign, expand welfare protections for the unemployed and increase support for healthy businesses and education. Draghi must also face measures that Europe has long pressured Italy to implement, such as simplifying bureaucracy, making the judicial system more efficient and instituting tax reform.
The new cabinet will include mainly politicians, but also some technocrats such as Daniele Franco, the director general of the Bank of Italy, as minister of economy, and Marta Cartabia, the former president of the Constitutional Court of Italy, as minister of justice. Mr Draghi held some former government ministers in key positions, such as the head of the health ministry.
The government is bringing together an unlikely set of rival parties from both ends of the political spectrum, from historic liberals to the anti-establishment movement and the far right.
The left Democratic Party will join the League’s nationalist party, Silvio Berlusconi’s center-right Forza Italia party and the populists of the Five Star Movement. Luigi Di Maio, the current foreign minister and a top Five Star official, has already called Berlusconi, a media mogul and former prime minister “a traitor.”
Last week, Mattarella, the president, called for a high-profile government after political leaders failed to reshape Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s faltering coalition government. Conte was overthrown after Matteo Renzi, leader of a minority party and another former prime minister, withdrew his support.
Draghi received an enthusiastic endorsement from Italy’s pro-European forces and from the centrists representing the country’s business elites. He also won the support of the populist Five-Star Movement, which, although it has hemorrhaging support in the polls, is still the largest party in Parliament.
“Our destiny is not to shutdown,” said Luigi Di Maio, Italy’s foreign minister of the Five Star Movement, in a video on Facebook, adding that it would be inexcusable to allow other parties to spend the European aid funds that Italy will receive. “I think we should participate.”
But the populist party did not give final authorization to Draghi’s government until Thursday night, after saying that most of its main members approved the government’s membership.
Even Conte, the outgoing prime minister who initially hoped to have a chance to form the new government through a reshuffle, said he would vote for Draghi’s government.
“There are such urgent needs that it is good to have a government,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
The leader of the League’s nationalist party, Matteo Salvini, also decided to cooperate. If he opposed the new government, he would have risked upsetting his strong base in northern Italy’s industry.
Salvini also took the opportunity to express his opinion on the substantial national recovery plan that Draghi will manage in the coming months.
“We can be part of a government that thinks about growth,” Salvini said during a news conference on Tuesday. “We trust Professor Draghi.”
For Salvini, who in 2018 wore “Enough Euro” T-shirts and defined the European Union as a “pit of snakes and jackals”, endorsing the former head of the European Central Bank represents a radical change. Even on the issue of immigration, conversations with Draghi already seem to have softened his normally harsh language.
“On immigration, I just want a European approach,” he said.
With that, Salvini signaled that he was ready to reach an agreement, even in his most crucial battle in recent years, one that helped his party gain support in public opinion and also in the elections.
“Draghi’s appointment has already taken effect,” Andrea Orlando, deputy secretary of the Democratic Party, wrote on Twitter Last week. “Salvini became pro-European in 24 hours.”