15 March
Italian elections: League leader Matteo Salvini ‘open to coalition’ with Five Star Movement
Italy’s Northern League leader Matteo Salvini has said he is willing to form a coalition government with the populist Five Star Movement, as Italian party bosses race to grab power following last week’s inclusive national election.
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With the prospect of further elections looming over the country, the League is stretching out a hand to fellow Eurosceptic party Five Star, also known as M5S, which took the highest vote share of any single party, at 32%.
Italy’s head of state, President Sergio Mattarella, is due to start consultations next month in a bid to end the stalemate, with “various parties positioning themselves for potentially fraught and lengthy negotiations”, reports Reuters.
An alliance between the League and the M5S would be a “challenge for Brussels”, says Politico, although both parties have “toned down their anti-EU positions” in recent months.
Salvini told reporters yesterday that, apart from an alliance with Matteo Renzi’s centre-left Democratic Party (PD), “everything is possible”.
The anti-establishment M5S has previously insisted that it will not form a coalition, nor negotiate, with anyone.
In the event that he can secure a partnership between the two parties, Salvini would have to compete with M5S leader Luigi Di Maio for the position of prime minister. Yesterday Salvini insisted he had “no prejudices” as to who would take the top job.
“We are working to build a government based on a solid political majority, not grabbing [other parties’] dissidents here and there,” Salvini added. “I don’t want to be prime minister at all costs.”
M5S has yet to comment on the possibility of negotiations.
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