ROME: Italy’s president on Wednesday approved little-known lawyer Giuseppe Conte’s nomination to be prime minister of a government formed by far-right and anti-establishment parties. Conte’s appointment could herald an end to more than two months of political uncertainty in the eurozone’s third-biggest economy — but the coalition’s eurosceptic and anti-immigrant stance has alarmed senior European officials.

President Sergio Matta­rella met on Wednesday afternoon with Conte, “to whom he gave the mandate to form a government,” said Ugo Zampetti, General Secr­e­tary of the Italian presidency. The talks with the president had been delayed amid a furore over claims that Conte had exaggerated his academic experience on his CV. He must now finalise his cabinet, which has been the subject of days of tough negotiations between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the far-right League.

The list of ministerial candidates must then be endorsed by head-of-state Mattarella before it can seek parliamentary appro­val. Italian media reported that League chief Matteo Salvini would become interior minister while Five Star leader Luigi Di Maio will be in charge of the economic development ministry.Almost immediately after being named as candidate for PM by the parties, Conte was plunged into scandal over doubts about his claims to have studied at some of the world’s top universities.

In a CV posted on the website of a lawyers’ association Conte said that he “furthered his juridical studies” at Yale, New York University (NYU), Duquesne Univer­sity in Pittsburgh, the Sorb­on­ne in Paris, and Cambridge.

NYU told AFP that their records did not “reflect Giuseppe Conte having been at the university as a student or having an appointment as a faculty member”.

It said he was granted permission to conduct research in the institution’s law library between 2008 and 2014.

Duquesne University told AFP he attended as part of an affiliation with Villa Nazareth, an exchange programme, and did legal research but “was not enrolled as a student”.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2018