Draghi accepts mandate as Italy's new PM, unveils new cabinet

Rome (Italy), February 13: Former president of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi officially accepted the mandate to lead the new Italian government as Prime Minister on Friday.
Draghi announced his decision early Friday evening, after a 45-minute talk with President Sergio Mattarella, from whom he had received the task on Feb. 3, following the collapse of the previous government led by Giuseppe Conte after a junior ally pulled out of the coalition.
KEY MINISTERS
In a short briefing with the media, Draghi unveiled the official list of ministers in the next cabinet, which included Daniele Franco -- current Bank of Italy's senior deputy governor -- as Minister of Economy and Finance, and and Giancarlo Giorgietti, a senior figure in the right-wing League party, as Minister for Economic Development.
Roberto Cingolani, scientific director of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), is appointed as Minister for Ecological Transition.
Luigi Di Maio, leader of Five Star Movement (M5S) majority party, was confirmed in the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs, along with Luciana Lamorgese as Interior Minister, Roberto Speranza as Health Minister, and Lorenzo Guerini as Defence Minister.
Other cabinet members included Marta Cartabia, former president of Italy's Constitutional Court, as Justice Minister, and economist Renato Brunetta as Minister of Public Administration.
The new team will be officially sworn in at the Quirinale Palace on Saturday, Draghi said.
After this passage, the cabinet will go before the parliament next week, reportedly on Tuesday and Wednesday, for the necessary votes of confidence from the lower house and the senate.
MAIN CHALLENGES
Draghi, 73, was governor of the Bank of Italy between 2005 and 2011.
He served as ECB chief from 2011 to 2019 and is acknowledged for preserving the euro during the worst of the debt crisis in 2012, and for launching the bond-buying Quantitative Easing scheme to support the economies of the European Union member states.
The new government is expected to lead the country possibly until the natural end of the current legislature in March 2023, and through a difficult phase marked by the coronavirus pandemic and by the need to recover from its economic effects, local media reported.
After receiving the mandate last week, Draghi said the priorities of his possible government would be to "overcome the pandemic, complete the (COVID-19) vaccination, provide answers to the citizens' immediate problems, and re-launch the country."
A key task in Draghi's agenda will be related to the plan to allocate the 209-billion-euro (253 billion U.S. dollars) package the European Union (EU) will provide to restart the Italian economy.
A national Resilience and Recovery Plan has already been outlined by the previous government, which specified the macro-areas of intervention, and the necessary reforms to relaunch the country.
Once eventually amended and completed, this recovery plan will have to be submitted to the EU Commission for approval by April.
Italy is one of the countries worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of Friday, it counted over 2.6 million cases and over 93,000 deaths.
The pandemic has shown a decreasing trend in the last weeks in terms of active infections, and some restrictions were lifted in early January, but health authorities have warned that the trend might easily go up again, and especially due to the spread of the coronavirus variants.
On the base of the latest monitoring survey, the Italian Health Institute stated on Friday that the variant first detected in the UK was estimated to be responsible for 17.8 percent of active cases currently registered.
Meanwhile, 242 candidate vaccines are being developed worldwide -- 63 of them in clinical trials -- in countries including Germany, China, Russia, Britain and the United States, according to information released by the World Health Organization on Feb. 9.
Source: Xinhua