Italy edged closer to formalizing a government after its populist parties' chosen candidate for prime minister accepted the role and received a mandate from President Sergio Mattarella, according to media reports.
Law professor Giuseppe Conte, who was again picked by leaders of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and League to head the proposed coalition government, met with the president and presented his list of ministers who will be sworn in June 1, Italian newswire Ansa and Sky News reported.
Easing fears of fresh elections, Five Star Movement head Luigi Di Maio and League leader Matteo Salvini earlier announced that they have hammered out "the conditions for a political government."
The parties previously abandoned their plans for a coalition government after Mattarella rejected Conte's pick for economy minister, Paolo Savona, a vocal critic of the EU who had suggested pulling Italy out of the eurozone.
Savona will become European affairs minister under the new coalition deal, and Giovanni Tria will be installed as the next economy minister, according to the reports, which cited unnamed sources.
The parties also chose Enzo Moavero Milanesi as foreign affairs minister. Di Maio was proposed as labor minister while Salvini was selected to head the home affairs ministry.
Former International Monetary Fund official Carlo Cottarelli, who had been asked by Mattarella to head a stopgap technocratic government, handed back his mandate and said that a coalition was "a better solution," according to a report by Ansa.
'More moderate' economy minister
With a new coalition deal, Italy is poised to avoid fresh elections, analysts at TD Securities wrote in a commentary. The addition of Tria to the proposed cabinet also indicates that the populist coalition "hopes to get off to a serious start" as he may satisfy Mattarella, according to the analysts.
The analysts noted that Tria appears to have a "more moderate" view on currency, but he may challenge the EU's fiscal rules.
"The near-term certainty of avoiding fresh elections must be weighed against the longer-term concerns this may imply for that country's fiscal dynamics," the analysts wrote. "In both cases, however, the immediate existential concerns for the euro have faded significantly."
