Italy’s new prime minister threatened on Monday to resign if a plan to reduce the powers of the upper house of parliament, a central part of his ambitious constitutional reform agenda, is blocked.
In the latest step of Matteo Renzi’s reform drive, the cabinet is due to approve a draft bill on Monday to transform the Senate into a non-elected chamber stripped of the power to approve budgets or hold votes of no-confidence in a government.
Renzi, who became Italy’s third prime minister in a year in February, has said that without a change in the system, the country risks being stuck with a rotating series of short-lived governments incapable of passing meaningful economic reforms.
“I have put all my credibility into this reform; if it doesn’t succeed, I can only assume the consequences,” Renzi, Italy’s youngest prime minister at 39, told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Renzi, head of the center-left Democratic Party, made a similar threat to quit over Senate reform on March 12 while pushing through a package of tax cuts aimed at reviving Italy’s sluggish economy, the third largest in the euro zone.
The former mayor of Florence came to power after a party coup, taking over the unwieldy cross-party coalition formed after last year’s deadlocked election which left no side able to govern alone.
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