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Italy's Democrats seeking coalition government with Five Star

ITALY’S Democrats will try to negotiate a coalition with the Five Star Movement to form a government, party leader Nicola Zingaretti said today.

Italy’s coalition government came apart when Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League, called earlier this month for a no-confidence vote and snap elections.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, an unelected jurist proposed as a compromise PM by Five Star and the League last year, resigned earlier this week.

Mr Zingaretti said any coalition must have “durable, broad backing” from Italy’s parliament and that such a government must drop the current administration’s harsh efforts to prevent refugees from entering Italy.

While the anti-immigrant measures are mostly League proposals originating with Mr Salvini, Five Star backed them.

Five Star has also condemned the Democrats as a party associated with Italy’s corrupt status quo.

They are opposed to many Five Star policies, including cutting the combined size of the two houses of parliament from 945 to 600 representatives, investigating the last Democratic government’s culpability in bank collapses that cost many Italians their savings and revoking the lucrative motorway concession granted to privateer Atlantia.

Five Star says the firm's underinvestment was responsible for the Genoa bridge collapse that killed 43 people last year, but the Democrats contend that acting against the company would spook investors.

The Democrats have said that a pledge to cut public spending and an explicit commitment to “loyal membership of the EU” should also be conditions of co-operation.

But former PM and Democrat Matteo Renzi says a deal must be agreed in order to stop Mr Salvini, whose party is thought likely to come first if elections are held, as they will need to be unless a new majority can be assembled in parliament. 

With 216 of the 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, Five Star could technically form a government with either the Democrats (who have 111) or Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (which has 104), but tensions with the latter are even worse than with the former.

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