Italy will vote on March 4 in an election expected to produce a hung parliament, instability and possible market turbulence in the euro zone’s third largest economy.
Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni’s cabinet set the date of the vote after the president dissolved parliament on Thursday, formally opening an election campaign which in practice has already been raging bitterly for weeks, APA reports quoting Reuters.
With opinion polls suggesting no one will win a parliamentary majority, Gentiloni said he would remain in office and ensure continuity until a new administration was in place.
As things stand, a center-right alliance around Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (Go Italy!) looks set to take the largest number of seats - potentially catapulting the 81-year-old four-times premier back to center stage even though he cannot become prime minister due to a tax fraud conviction.
Gentiloni told reporters at the end of his one-year spell in power that Italy should not fear uncertainty, noting that it was now common to many European countries.
“We mustn’t dramatize the risk of instability, we are quite inoculated against it,” he said, in reference to Italy’s frequent changes of government, adding that elsewhere in Europe there has been “an Italianisation of political systems”.
Germany is locked in talks to produce a new government after inconclusive elections, while Spain and Portugal have minority governments and Britain is in tangled negotiations over its exit from the European Union.
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