Italy’s Conte Forges On in Rocky Attempt to Build Coalition
- Five Star, Democrats see progress after talks on policies
- Marriage of convenience plagued by quarrelsome allies
The Palazzo Chigi, the headquarters of the Italian government, in Rome, Italy.
Photographer: Alessia Pierdomenico/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
Italy’s premier-designate Giuseppe Conte, plagued by skirmishes between unlikely bedfellows as he seeks to forge a new ruling coalition, made progress on drawing up a common program for government though tensions remain chiefly over ministerial jobs.
A Florentine lawyer with no political experience when he was catapulted to lead the outgoing populist administration in 2018, Conte is being haunted by the ghost of the punch-ups which destroyed that government. He has until next week to seal a new, messy marriage of convenience between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the center-left Democratic Party, or PD.