Berlusconi's coalition government edged closer to breaking up, as the Italian prime minister struggled to draw up a list of economic reforms he hopes will satisfy EU leaders tackling the continent's debt crisis.
The list of planned measures – details of which were under wraps on Tuesday evening – falls short of the government decree packed with economic stimulus measures that Berlusconi has tried in vain to pass over recent weeks in the face of an increasingly fractious cabinet.
Berlusconi is expected to present the list in Brussels on Wednesday as markets increasingly focus on debt ridden Italy as the next weak link in the eurozone.
The prime minister spent Monday night and Tuesday wrangling with the Northern League party, on which his slim parliamentary majority depends, over its refusal to back a key plan: raising Italy's pension age from 65 to 67.
Cabinet members suggested on Monday that League leader Umberto Bossi had been coaxed into a compromised deal, but Bossi said the division between the League and Berlusconi had left him "pessimistic" about the government's chances of surviving.
"You cannot touch pensions to please the Germans," he said.
Should the government now fall, Bossi said he would not accept a temporary technical government made up of experts and appointed by the Italian president, which many have predicted. "We don't do technical governments," he said. "If the government falls you have definitely got to have elections."
Bossi has hitherto stayed loyal to Berlusconi, despite the prime minister's sex scandals, trials and sagging popularity, but his proximity to the premier has lost him credibility among northern Italian voters who support the devolutionist League.
As League officials held hurried meetings on Tuesday to decide whether to back Berlusconi or not, observers recalled how it was Bossi who walked out of Berlusconi's first government in 1994, leaving it to collapse.
In Brussels Berlusconi can expect a tough reception from EU leaders who have demanded he show up with real reforms able to kickstart the moribund Italian economy and help bring down Italy's €1.8tn debt.
The Guardian
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