Italy’s new government looks much like just-ended one
ROME — Italy’s latest government was formed and rapidly sworn in Monday, a centre-left coalition headed by new Premier Paolo Gentiloni and strikingly similar in makeup to the just-ended one that Matteo Renzi quit after a humiliating loss.
Economist Pier Carlo Padoan remains as finance minister of the new government, which inherits the same deteriorating banking crisis, stubbornly flat economy and other urgent problems that marked Renzi’s tenure.
The largely unchanged composition of the newly forged coalition government fueled fresh calls from opposition forces and even from within Gentiloni’s ruling Democrat party for hastened elections.
Gentiloni, 62, served as Renzi’s foreign minister until the latter resigned after voters resoundingly defeated a Dec. 4 referendum on government-backed constitutional reforms.