Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi has submitted his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella after key coalition parties withdrew their support for his government.
In a statement on Thursday, the president’s office said Mattarella had “taken note” of the resignation and asked Draghi’s government to remain on in a caretaker capacity.
The resignation opens the way for early elections in September or October. The statement by the president’s office did not specify whether Mattarella would dissolve parliament or call snap polls.
Senate President Maria Elisabetta Casellati and Chamber of Deputies President Roberto Fico were expected at the Quirinal Palace in Rome on Thursday afternoon.
“They are probably going to hash out some timeline for early elections,” Al Jazeera’s Adam Raney, reporting from Rome, said.
Draghi, a former European Central Bank chief, became prime minister in 2021 as Italy wrestled with the coronavirus pandemic and an ailing economy, had reprimanded his squabbling national unity coalition and urged them back into line before it was too late.
He won a confidence vote in the Senate on Wednesday, but boycotts by three of his coalition allies in the voting virtually doomed any prospects for his unity government’s survival.
Draghi had already tendered his resignation last week after one of his partners, the populist Five Star Movement, failed to back him in a confidence vote on measures tackling the high cost of living.
Mattarella at the time had rejected the resignation and told him to go before parliament to see if he could keep the broad coalition going until the planned end of the legislature in early 2023.
In a speech to the Senate after surviving the confidence vote, Draghi had made a plea for unity and laid out a series of issues facing Italy and conditions to stay in office.