Conte presents new Cabinet “to make Italy better”

Giuseppe Conte presented the list who will form his cabinet in the new M5S-PD coalition government.

The 5Stars have 10 ministers, the PD nine and one goes to Leu, a small far-left group that will also be part of the coalition. Another minister is a technocrat not affiliated to any party.

Conte said the new government would “dedicate … our best energies” to “make Italy better.”

POLITICO highlights the fact that Roberto Gualtieri, who chairs the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, will be Italy’s new finance minister.

A PD official said Gualtieri received strong support from former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi who wanted him at the Treasury and wanted Nicola Danti — who will take Gualtieri’s seat as an MEP and is considered close to Renzi — to take over at the helm of the ECON committee.

Danti declined to comment.

Conte also confirmed that Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the 5Stars, will become foreign minister. Di Maio was deputy prime minister and development minister in a government formed last year with the far-right League. That government’s collapse, at the start of August, paved the way for a tie-up between the 5Stars and the PD, two parties which have long been at odds.

Another key position is the interior ministry, which had been in the hands of League leader Matteo Salvini, whose campaigns against NGOs rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean were considered an essential component of the League’s success. The PD wants a radical change of course and Salvini will be replaced by the only technocrat in the Cabinet, Luciana Lamorgese, a former senior interior ministry official and migration expert.