He is the youngest premier in Europe and in the history of the Italian Republic. Moreover, Matteo Renzi, 39, former mayor of Florence, leads the youngest Italian cabinet ever, with an average age of 47. The 16-strong team, half of them women (the parity between men and women is another first for the Italian executive), was sworn in by President Giorgio Napolitano and entered into the fullness of its powers.
Ringing a little ceremonial bell, Renzi told his ministers: “Recess is over. I expect ministers to come up with concrete proposals and not ads”.
Renzi took over from party colleague Enrico Letta, whom he forced out of office for not moving quickly enough on reforms. He had accused Letta, after 10 months at the helm of a left/right coalition, of a lack of action on improving the critical economic situation: unemployment is at its highest level in 40 years and the economy has shrunk by 9% in seven years.
The new premier has vowed to overhaul the job market, and the tax and education systems in four months time. “The country has no alternative – he said – and now has the chance to achieve reforms that have not been made for years”. That is why he also added, on announcing his team: “It’s a government that will start to work from tomorrow morning”.
After three hours of talks with President Napolitano in which he dropped his formal “reservation” about accepting a government-formation mandate and presented the new executive, the new premier explained: “I have accepted the responsibility of giving Italy a government of hope”. Renzi said he is aiming for administration to last until the end of the parliamentary term in 2018; the head of State said he also agreed that the government should last till then.
Renzi will be the third consecutive premier not directly elected by the Italian people. He won control of the Democratic Party in a primary election a couple of months ago, then ousted fellow party member Enrico Letta in a party vote.
The new administration will be supported by the same majority as Letta’s, with outgoing Angelino Alfano’s New Centre Right as junior partner. Alfano was deputy premier and interior minister in Letta’s executive. Now he will only be interior minister.
Alfano is the leader of a group of centre-right moderates who split from Silvio Berlusconi’s revived Forza Italia party when it rejected the ex-premier’s bid to scupper Letta after the Democratic party insisted on a Senate ban for the media magnate following a tax-fraud conviction.
Renzi made an agreement with Berlusconi to change the Constitution in order to simplify the Senate and limit bureaucracy. The Italian people, however, are awaiting job and tax reform before anything else.
This will be the duty of Pier Carlo Padoan, chief economist of the OECD and former economics professor and International Monetary Fund official, and now Italy’s Economy Minister. Padoan was named to the post by Renzi while he was in Australia for a G20 meeting.
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