Italy’s new government collapses before even getting started

ITALY’s governmental crisis was already the longest since the foundation of the republic after the second world war. It has now become a constitutional crisis, with implications for the entire European Union. As the leader of its biggest party called for President Sergio Mattarella to be impeached for refusing to install western Europe’s first all-populist government, Italy appeared to be heading for fresh elections at which anti-establishment parties were expected to increase their parliamentary majority.

On the morning of May 28th, Mr Mattarella summoned Carlo Cottarelli (pictured), an economist and former IMF official with no experience of politics, to the presidential palace and asked him to form an interim cabinet of non-party technocrats to steer the country back to the polls. Mr Cottarelli had been preceded to the palace on the night of May 27th by Giuseppe Conte, the candidate for prime minister of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the hard-right Northern League. Together, the two populist parties won half the votes in the election on March 4th. Mr Conte left to announce that the president had vetoed the government that he and his sponsors—Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the M5S, and Matteo Salvini, the head of the League—had proposed. He said he had called off his attempt to form a government.