The Duran’s Alex Christoforou and Editor-in-Chief Alexander Mercouris discuss breaking news that Italian President Sergio Mattarella has given the green light to Giuseppe Conte, who resigned as prime minister last week, to form a new government coalition after the previous Italian government collapsed.
The new Italian government is taking comfort in some of Trump’s positions, especially on migration, trade and Russia, says Andrew Spannaus. By Andrew Spannaus in Milan Special to Consortium News During the 2016 United States election campaign, most of Italy’s…Read more →
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez holds the reigns of power with the help a minority coalition with a very thin grasp. His tenure is brand new and now he’s in a position to test the strength of his ruling coalition in a battle of the wills on one of the most fractious of governmental issues: budget matters. A vote came up on Friday with a new plan to balance the budget in which Sanchez’s allies withheld their support, which could show that perhaps this coalition isn’t really united where it counts.
On Sunday, an informal meeting was hosted in Brussels at the request of (for now) German Chancellor Angela Merkel to tackle the issue of migration and to potentially identify a ‘European solution’.
Merkel is between a rock and a hard spot over the migration issue as it threatens to split her governmental coalition, and Merkel’s position as Chancellor.
Just before an informal meeting convened to discuss Europe’s approach to the ongoing migrant crisis, French President Emmanuel Macron advocated economic sanctions against EU member nations which refuse to admit migrants into their country in comments which drew the ire of Italian government ministers.
Macron advocates setting up closed centers to accommodate migrants at locations where they most often appear while they await for their asylum applications to be processed.
Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, and German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, butt heads as the migration issue exposes a growing divide between the EU’s member constituents.
Merkel has proposed a draft declaration to address the matter which contains a provision that could lead to the repatriation of migrants back to the EU nations in which migrants originally filed for asylum, which often means Italy or Greece, leaving them to disproportionately field the issue, a provision which Italy rejects.
Much speculation has hit the internet as of late relative to what was going to happen with Italy. After Matarella vetoed the government chosen by Parliament’s Prime Ministerial designate and installed a technocrat to serve the position in the mean time, until new elections could be held, it was seen as likely. But Giuseppe Conte, the Italian political coalition’s man of the hour, managed to arrange a designation to head key government positions.
France24 reports:
The Five Star Movement and the Northern League agreed to form a coalition government that would have represented the two anti-EU parties which together won almost 50% of the vote in the parliamentary elections, and which have a majority in the lower house of the Italian Parliament the Chamber of Deputies.
There government formed represented the parties which won the parliamentary elections, and should have been allowed to take office and govern, but the European Union was not in agreement.
Before analysing what has just happened in Italy and discussing its likely consequences, it is necessary to say something about the fact of what has just happened.
Italy is supposed to be a parliamentary republic with the Prime Minister and the government accountable to the parliament.
As in other parliamentary republics the Italian President is supposed to be a figure above politics, whose primary function is to safeguard the constitution, which he is sworn to uphold. He is not supposed to meddle in day to day politics or to take on himself the leadership of the country.
