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After weeks of discussions, antecedents and hypotheses, the announced and anticipated government crisis could finally be formalized on Tuesday night, if Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi’s party, decides to withdraw its support for Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte. The crisis could open specifically tonight, tomorrow or later, depending on what happens in the Council of Ministers scheduled for 9:30 p.m., but after many announcements and delays, it currently seems that the hypothesis that the government’s difficulties can be solved with a simple reorganization increasingly remote.
Tonight’s long-awaited Council of Ministers is the one in which the new draft of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan is presented, on which the resources of the Recovery Fund depend, the main instrument of the European Union to balance the economic crisis caused by the pandemic. of coronavirus. . The latest draft, after a series of changes, was sent last night by the Ministry of Economy to members of the government. Once approved, the text must be examined by Parliament, which can modify it.
Tonight’s attention is mainly focused on what could happen immediately after the Council of Ministers, and which could finally lead to the formal opening of the Conte government crisis that has been talked about for weeks. Italia Viva, which today is part of the parliamentary majority and has two ministers (Elena Bonetti for Equal Opportunities, Teresa Bellanova for Agrarian Policies), has been threatening to withdraw its delegation from the government for days. The problem for Conte is that without Italia Viva the government runs the risk of not having a majority in the Senate.
During the Council of Ministers tonight it will be important, first of all, to be attentive to how Italia Viva will vote: if it abstains or if it votes in favor of the new draft. After that, the hypothesis that circulates the most in the newspapers is that Renzi, regardless of the vote, withdraws his delegation from the government, effectively opening the crisis. You could do it already at night after the game is over, or tomorrow.
There are three scenarios he talks about the most. Giuseppe Conte could decide to resign and go to the Quirinal, where he could receive a new assignment from Sergio Mattarella to form a third government different from the current one, but always led by him: a Count (because it would be the third, after the one Matteo Salvini has and the current one). And it would be what the newspapers call a “controlled crisis”, which could only materialize with a preventive agreement with Renzi, which should guarantee the support of Italia Viva in Parliament. Renzi, however, does not seem to want this scenario.
Without this agreement, what is called a “crisis in the dark” would open. Following the resignation of Conte, the outcome of the consultations between Mattarella and the parties could in fact lead to the formation of a government with the same majority, but with a different Prime Minister, a hypothesis that Matteo Renzi has repeatedly mentioned. In fact, several newspapers have argued for some time that the decision to resign in the dark could be very risky for Conte: once presented, Renzi could work on solutions that do not envisage Conte as prime minister.
This risk – and we come to the third hypothesis – could be avoided by exposing ourselves to the requirement of trust in the Chambers. But if Italia Viva did not vote in favor, Conte would only have to seek a numerical majority and no longer a political one: that is, he could obtain a majority if some parliamentarian from Italia Viva or other parties departed from his group (they would be those who at this time are defined as “responsible”). The numbers in the Senate say that the majority fluctuates between 166 and 170. But if the vote for Italia Viva were to fail, it would drop to 152: therefore, at least 9 of the so-called “responsible” of the absolute majority would be needed (equal to 161).
If Conte were discouraged in the Senate, it would be very difficult for him to obtain reelection for the formation of a new government. But even a majority reached with the vote of some scattered “leaders” would be a fragile result: it would create problems in the commissions and would have consequences on Conte’s political legitimacy. There is one last possibility: if there were no majority in Parliament (same as now or different) in support of a new government, it would go to elections. But several parties, including the Democratic Party, are not in favor of such a hypothesis.
For weeks there has been talk of a possible government crisis caused by the withdrawal of Italia Viva, and hypotheses and antecedents have been circulating for days regarding Renzi’s true intentions. Renzi argued the content of his criticisms last December 17 in a letter sent to the Prime Minister and then in several interviews: they range from the management of the vaccination plan to the use of the MES (on which, however, it is not clear how would go in case of a vote in Parliament), from the delegation to the secret services maintained by Conte (and that Conte himself would be willing to leave to avoid the crisis) to the role of the extraordinary commissioner for the COVID-19 emergency Domenico Arcuri.
But criticism of Italia Viva has mainly had to do with the Italian Recovery Fund plan. In fact, the first draft of the Plan had ended at the center of Italia Viva’s main protests, but other parties had also called for changes in government. The new draft seems to accommodate the main requests made, from increasing spending on health and education, to concentrating investments not on tax credits but on investments.
The problems also related to the operational management of the funds, as well as general indications about their destination. Conte’s initial idea was to create a “control room”, made up of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Economy Roberto Gualtieri and the Minister of Economic Development Stefano Patuanelli of the 5-Star Movement, supported by managers who in turn should have supervised some “technical”, but this plan was not shared by Italia Viva. That form of management, critics and Italia Viva said above all, would have created a parallel structure that, instead of streamlining the project implementation process, would overlap with existing ministries.
For now, the issue of fund management has been postponed and will be contained in a later decree. In the text that will reach the Council of Ministers, of which some drafts are circulating, it is simply stated that “the government, based on the European guidelines for the implementation of the Plan, will present a model of governance which identifies the responsibility for the implementation of the Plan, guarantees coordination with the competent ministers at the national level and other levels of government, and monitors the progress of spending.
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