Sergio Mattarella: Meloni accepts the commission from the President of the Italian Republic to form a Government | International

The President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella, has summoned Giorgia Meloni this Friday afternoon to commission her to form a government. The leader of the Brothers of Italy, who won the elections with 26% of the vote and will govern with her coalition partners (Forza Italia and the League), has accepted the task. The far-right leader has already presented her list of executive ministers, approved by the head of state. It is scheduled that this Saturday at 10:00 she will swear the position before Mattarella. Meloni’s government will have a strong political profile and has had to satisfy the three partners that make up the coalition led by the extreme right, which won the elections on September 25. The three representatives of these parties, in fact, have attended the round of consultations with the head of state together this Friday.

The idea that they maintained in the Quirinal Palace (seat of the Presidency of the Republic) and the coalition is that everything could be completed quickly, as it has been. The commission that Meloni has received was not exploratory (when the parties consider that the foundations are not yet solid), but definitive. “We have agreed on the need to give this nation a government in the shortest possible time. The entire coalition has given a unanimous indication proposing me as the one in charge of forming the government. We announce right now that we are ready”, Meloni pointed out this morning at the end of the first meeting with Mattarella.

One of the peculiarities of the new Executive will be the presence of two vice presidents who balance the distribution of power with Forza Italia and the League: they will be Antonio Tajani and Matteo Salvini, who will also occupy the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Infrastructure, respectively.

The victory of the coalition on September 25 was clear: 43% of the votes. So was Meloni’s distance from his partners, obtaining more than twice as much as each of them (26% support). However, the last few days have been very convulsive due to the discrepancies maintained by the names that should make up the Council of Ministers. Meloni has had to balance and satisfy his allies, but the main problem has come from the hand of Silvio Berlusconi, 86 years old and still leader of Forza Italia, who tried to give the future prime minister a pulse and lost. In addition, the owner of Mediaset made several statements defending the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and the invasion of Ukraine that have compromised the Atlanticist and Europeanist line that Meloni had promised to maintain.

Berlusconi has created problems for the far-right leader with his statements. But, above all, he has created them for his party and the European People’s Party. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for example, which was almost assigned to Antonio Tajani, was left up in the air due to the words of The Cavaliere about Putin. But Berlusconi is not the only problem. The League appointed Lorenzo Fontana, an anti-aborist who opposes sanctions on Russia, as president of the Chamber of Deputies. So in the end, it turns out that the Europeanist and Atlanticist line will remain in the hands of the Brothers of Italy. In fact, Meloni has thought of Raffaele Fitto (MEP responsible for party alliances in Brussels) as minister for European Affairs.

The fundamental frictions occurred at the expense of the Ministry of Justice, which Berlusconi wanted for a member of his party. But the leader of the Brothers of Italy resisted the pressure and everything indicates that she will place Carlo Nordio, a magistrate ideologically aligned with her party.

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