Italy Government Braces for Upheaval After Five Star Defections

(Bloomberg) -- Italy’s ruling coalition, rocked by the defection of three senators, prepared for a period of heightened instability as some lawmakers warned that more exits could be coming.

A day after Senators Francesco Urraro, Stefano Lucidi and Ugo Grassi left the Five Star Movement to join the opposition League party, Lucidi warned that another “20-30 people will leave” Five Star’s delegation in the two houses of parliament, possibly to form a new political group, in comments reported by Corriere della Sera.

The defections leave Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s Five Star-Democratic Party coalition with a razor-thin majority in the upper house, although senators from other parties as well as independent lawmakers could continue to support the government.

Conte doesn’t expect any further lawmakers to leave the coalition, the premier said in Brussels Friday. “Everyone who wants to work with us can do so until 2023,” he added.

With the state budget for 2020 due for parliamentary approval by the end of the year, Conte’s challenge will be to hammer out a government agenda in January, in a bid to lock in the coalition’s divided partners on a raft of future policy measures.

While the defections complicate the parliamentary math for Conte, his problems don’t end there. Lawmakers from both Five Star and the Democrats suspect that League leader Matteo Salvini has struck a deal with ex-premier Matteo Renzi, who leads a small party within the coalition, to bring the government down and force early elections, daily la Repubblica reported Friday.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jerrold Colten in Milan at jcolten@bloomberg.net;John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Marco Bertacche, Karl Maier

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