Berlusconi agrees to conditional resignation

Austerity plan would have to pass first

November 09, 2011|By Elisabetta Povoledo and Rachel Donadio, New York Times

If he steps down, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi would risk losing immunity… (Roberto Monaldo/LaPresse/via…)

ROME - Cornered by the European debt crisis, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy offered a conditional resignation yesterday, agreeing to step down but only after Parliament passes an austerity package demanded by the European Union, a move that could bring the country closer to early elections.

Berlusconi, one of Europe’s wiliest leaders and the principal figure in Italian politics for 18 years, had failed to reach a parliamentary majority in a key vote yesterday, increasing the pressure on him to resign as financial markets drove up Italy’s borrowing costs to record levels and raised further alarms about economic contagion in Europe.

The prime minister met last evening with the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano. A statement issued by the president’s office after the meeting said that the prime minister had acknowledged “the implications of the result of the day’s vote in the lower house’’ but at the same time had expressed concerns about the need to pass the urgent reforms asked by Italy’s European partners. The prime minister said he would resign once the pledged measures had been passed.

Under Berlusconi’s offer, once he formally stepped down, the president would then begin talks with various parliamentary leaders to decide whether to go to elections or try to form a new government with the existing political assembly.

There was no timetable affixed to Berlusconi’s conditional resignation offer. The additional measures Italy had pledged to the EU have not been presented to Parliament yet, although Berlusconi has said in the past that they would arrive in the Senate by mid-November.

But it was unclear how opposition lawmakers would respond. In theory, they could bring down the government during the vote on the austerity measures.

By linking his fortunes to the austerity bill - whose contents have not yet been finalized, let alone implemented - Berlusconi may have pulled off a political coup, effectively blocking both the opposition and dissidents from within his own party from bringing him down in a confidence vote over the measures.

If Berlusconi stepped down after the vote, which is expected later this month, that would give him more leverage to ask for early elections instead of creating the conditions for a government staffed by technocrats.

The day he stops being prime minister, Berlusconi would also risk losing immunity in several corruption trials.

While representing a significant setback for a leader once seen as invincible, Berlusconi’s announcement does not prevent him from presenting himself as his party’s lead candidate in future elections. Yet that outcome was looking more unlikely with Italy’s borrowing costs spiking to record highs and European leaders increasingly seeing him as a liability for Italy.