ROME - Italy's president was tasked on Tuesday with deciding whether to approve little-known lawyer Giuseppe Conte as prime minister of a coalition government set up by anti-establishment and far-right groups.
Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio (L) announced Italian lawyer Giuseppe Conte as candidate for prime minister
Sergio Mattarella is expected to announce on Wednesday his decision whether to endorse political novice Conte, 54, nominated by the populist Five Star Movement and far-right League.
He hosted the speakers of the lower house and the Senate on Tuesday to discuss Conte's nomination.
The head of state has to agree to the parties' candidate and ministerial team before they can seek approval for the new government in parliament.
Mattarella's endorsement would take the two parties a step closer to setting up a eurosceptic, anti-austerity government in the eurozone's third-biggest economy.
It would seal an end to more than two months of political deadlock followed March's inconclusive general election.
Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio and League chief Matteo Salvini unveiled their policy programme on Friday.
As well as planning to speed up expulsions of illegal immigrants, the programme contains anti-austerity measures including drastic tax cuts, pension reform rollbacks and a monthly basic income.
- EU warning -
European authorities Tuesday warned Di Maio and Salvini to be "responsible" in their budget measures.
Italy's 2.3 trillion euros of debt is 132 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), the highest ratio in Europe apart from Greece and more than double the bloc's 60-percent ceiling.
"We view it as important that the Italian government remains on course in pursuing a responsible budget policy," German business daily Handelsblatt quoted Valdis Dombrovskis, the body's vice-president for the euro, as saying.
Italy has one of the eurozone's lowest growth rates, with 8.3 percent of the population living in absolute poverty, according to national statistics agency Istat.
Istat announced Tuesday a GDP growth forecast of 1.4 percent in 2018, down 0.1 percent on an April forecast.
- CV controversy -
Conte's CV boasts studies at New York University (NYU), the Sorbonne and Cambridge, but some entries have been called into question.
NYU told Monday's New York Times they had no record of him studying there to "further his juridical studies" as Conte's CV claims. The university said he might have taken part in one or two-day courses for which they don't keep records.
Cambridge University said it does not "disclose personal data without the knowledge and/or consent of the subject of that personal data".
Conte has yet to speak publicly, but Five Star has defended its PM pick to head a cabinet in which Di Maio and Salvini are tipped to hold key posts.
"The international and Italian press are going wild over presumed qualifications that Conte has never claimed to have. This is the umpteenth confirmation that they really are afraid of this government of change," Five Star said in a statement.
- Authority -
Some observers questioned whether Conte had the necessary authority for the job.
"He's in a very difficult situation because he has to deal with two groups who have formed a difficult compromise," Franco Pavoncello, a political scientist and president of Rome's John Cabot University, told AFP.
"What remains to be seen is whether he's going to be able to control the various political directions in which this coalition was formed."
Some media and commentators said Conte would be at the command of the two coalition groups' leaders.
"I think that he'll have to respond to what they want, do what they decide," Gianfranco Pasquino, political science professor at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna, told AFP.
"It doesn't seem that he has political experience so he will be forced to carry out the preferences of Di Maio and Salvini."