Italian parliament dissolved after Prime Minister Sergio Mattarella resigns

Elections will be on September 25, while the internationally respected Mario Draghi will stay on as head of government.

Sergio Mattarella signs the order to dissolve parliament in front of Mario Draghi on Thursday night. Picture: AFP

Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella dissolved parliament overnight Thursday, triggering early elections which could bring the hard right to power after the country’s warring parties toppled reformer Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Elections will take place on September 25, a government source said, and the internationally respected Mr Draghi, 74, will stay on as head of the ­government until then.

Dissolving parliament was always a last resort, Mr Mattarella said, but in this case a lack of consensus among the parties that had made up the national unity government made it “inevitable”.

Italy was facing major challenges, however, that could not be put on the backburner while the parties campaigned, he said.

There could be no “pauses in the essential interventions to combat the effects of the economic and social crisis and in particular the rise in inflation”.

Mr Draghi initially offered his resignation last Thursday after the populist Five Star Movement deserted a confidence vote on a €26bn ($38bn) cost-of-living package. His resignation was then rejected by Mr Mattarella, who asked him to return to parliament to see if he could revive the government and tackle urgent reforms needed if the country is to receive billions of euros in post-pandemic aid from the EU.

On Wednesday night, Mr Draghi won vote of confidence in the Senate, but was deserted by a majority of his cross-party coalition. Five Star, Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia and Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League Movement said it was no longer possible for them to work together.

The stunned centre-left Democratic Party (PD), which had supported Mr Draghi, said its hopes were now pinned on Italians being “wiser than their MPs”.

Based on current polls, a rightist alliance led by Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy would comfortably win a snap vote. “No more excuses,” tweeted Ms Meloni, 45, who vociferously led the opposition throughout Mr Draghi’s term and has long called for fresh elections.

Mr Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief, was parachuted into the premiership in 2021 as Italy wrestled with a pandemic and ailing economy.

Though Five Star triggered the crisis, it was Mr Salvini who pushed Mr Draghi under the bus, political commentators said. The former interior minister, who has been losing voters to Ms Meloni, “saw an opportunity to regain his primacy in the centre-right and within the League”, editorialist Marco Damilano wrote in the Domani daily.

Mr Draghi’s downfall comes despite polls suggesting most Italians wanted him to stay at the helm until the scheduled general election next May.

Anxious investors were watching closely as the coalition imploded. The ECB on Thursday unveiled a tool to correct stress in bond markets for indebted eurozone members such as Italy.

Milan’s stock market dropped 2 per cent on opening Thursday.

Brothers of Italy, which has neo-fascist roots, is leading in the polls, with 23.9 per cent of voter intentions, according to a SWG survey held three days before Mr Draghi’s resignation.

To win a majority it would need the support of the League (polling at 14 per cent) and Forza Italia (7.4 per cent). The PD is just behind Brothers of Italy, with 22.1 per cent, but may be forced to ally with Five Star (polling at 11.2 per cent) if it is to have a chance at beating the right.

Should a Brothers of Italy-led coalition win, it “would offer a much more disruptive scenario for Italy and the EU”, wrote Luigi Scazzieri, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform.

AFP