ROME (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th January, 2021) The Italian parliament's lower house is expected to debate and decide whether to grant a vote of confidence to the government of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Monday, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported.
Conte will address the lawmakers before the vote, after which a debate will follow and each lawmaker will cast their vote individually. The entire procedure is reportedly expected to take six to seven hours, including breaks for sanitizing the room.
Because the voting is expected to take so long, Conte will likely address the upper house on Tuesday, the newspaper said.
Italy is on the brink of a new political crisis after the Italia Viva party, which is a member of the ruling coalition, withdrew two ministers from the Conte administration. This way, the ruling coalition risks losing the parliamentary majority, in which case the current government might face a vote of no confidence.
On Wednesday, Agriculture Minister Teresa Bellanova and Equal Opportunities Minister Elena Bonetti stepped down, citing disagreements over the country's post-coronavirus recovery spending. Their party, Italia Viva, has been an ardent opponent of the government's COVID-19 recovery plan, which maps how Italy is going to spend the over 200 billion Euros ($243 billion) that it will receive from the NextGenerationEU recovery fund.
