(Bloomberg) -- Giorgia Meloni is scrambling to prevent Italian coalition tensions from breaking into the open after a junior partner sided with the opposition to defeat a government proposal.
Forza Italia, the party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi, defied whips on Wednesday to sink a bill regulating fees for public broadcaster RAI. That legislation had been proposed by the League, another one of Meloni’s partners, and shortly after, the League abstained in a vote on a Forza Italia amendment on health policy.
The laws themselves aren’t a priority for Meloni. But the fact that her majority is fraying at this point is unhelpful ahead of a far more important vote on the budget next month. People with knowledge of the situation in parliament insisted there’s no danger of Meloni losing that ballot.
Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Meloni’s team at Palazzo Chigi was annoyed by the stumble in Parliament but insisted that it won’t stop the coalition from continuing its work.
Meloni doesn’t have a numbers problem, with comfortable majorities in both chambers of Parliament. But rumors of tensions between Forza Italia, Matteo Salvini’s League, and Meloni’s party Brothers of Italy have grown in recent months, with divisions evident on issues as varied as the war in Ukraine and citizenship and LGBTQ+ rights.
In a sign of potential institutional trouble, President Sergio Mattarella saw Meloni on Wednesday for lunch just as the spat was unfolding, his office said, adding it was a cordial and productive encounter.
“It was a normal conversation between a president of the republic and a premier,” it said, noting the lunch had been scheduled at least a week in advance and adding they discussed recent international travel, the budget, and relations with Europe. The two meet regularly, at least once a month, officials said.
Since coming to power in late 2022, Meloni’s coalition has been one of the most durable governments in Italy’s post-war history, in contrast to the instability in Germany and France.
“We have to go back to respecting the manifesto we put to voters and to doing things together,” Raffaele Nevi, Forza Italia’s national spokesman, was quoted as saying by Italian news agency Ansa. The League, he said, “should calm down.”
Forza Italia chief Antonio Tajani, also the country’s foreign minister, met in public with Meloni on Wednesday in an attempt to project unity, but reports in Italian media suggest that didn’t have the desired effect.
Meanwhile, the Berlusconi family, which underpins Forza Italia, has taken an increasing interest in politics, Bloomberg has reported.
(Updates with details of a meeting with the president starting in the sixth paragraph. A previous version of this story corrected details of the League vote in the second paragraph.)
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