Italy’s new PM vows radical change as party bosses nod

“The truth is that we have created a radical change and we’re proud of it,” Conte told the Senate, where he is expected to win a confidence vote later in the day.

The coalition, made up of the 5-Star Movement and the League, has about a 10-vote majority in the Senate and a wider margin in the lower house, which is due to vote on Wednesday, making the outcome of the votes a foregone conclusion.

Conte, 53, spoke as 5-Star leader Luigi di Maio and League chief Matteo Salvini sat beside him, nodding their approval as the urbane law professor ticked off all the main elements of a policy agenda the party leaders had finalised days before.

Highlights – Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s inaugural speech
Italy’s bonds yields rise after new PM promises ‘radical change’
Di Maio is labour and industry minister in Conte’s government, and Salvini is interior minister, raising doubt about whether the prime minister, a political novice, can put his own stamp on the government’s agenda.

Conte is not affiliated to any party, though he is close to 5-Star, which presented him as a potential minister before the March 4 election. Di Maio and Salvini vetoed each other as prime minister and picked him as a compromise figure.

In a sign of the risk that the party leaders will upstage Conte, Salvini spoke with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday after the government was formed — a call that, as many Italian newspapers noted, would normally have been carried out by a new prime minister, not one of his cabinet members.

Conte said the government’s priorities would be to address social hardship through the introduction of an universal income — a 5-Star election promise — and to stem an influx of irregular immigrants, a key policy of the League.

“The political forces that make up this government have been accused of being populist and anti-system…,” he said.

“If populism means the ruling class listens to the needs of the people … (and) if anti-system means to aim to introduce a new system, which removes old privileges and encrusted power, well these political forces deserve both these epithets.”

Conte touched on one of the most sensitive issues for financial markets, saying fiscal rules governing the euro zone should be “aimed at helping citizens” and that Italy would negotiate changes to the European Union governance.

Italy’s government bonds sold off on Conte’s remarks, which confirmed much of the coalition’s budget-busting agenda.