ROME — Italy’s president on Wednesday cleared the way for the populist parties that won the most votes in elections two months ago to govern together, a step that seems certain to make Italy by far the largest and most important member of the European Union to be run by populist forces and grant a big victory to the bloc’s antagonists.
The Five Star Movement, which began as a Web-based protest against the political establishment, and the League, a hard-right party that has campaigned on an Italians-first platform, agreed last week on a governing agenda that would crack down on illegal immigration, challenge budget rules from Brussels, and lift sanctions against Russia.
On Wednesday, after 80 days of arduous talks, President Sergio Mattarella gave a mandate to form a government to the parties’ consensus pick for prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, a little-known lawyer with no government experience. Critics assert he would be a pawn of the populist party leaders.
Conte, in blue suit, white shirt, and checked tie, walked into the Quirinal Palace shortly before 5:30 p.m. in Rome. Ushers in formal dress shook his hands and brought him to the president’s office.
Nearly two hours later, a top Quirinal official announced that Mattarella had asked Conte to try and form a government and that Conte had accepted.
Matteo Salvini, 45, leader of the League, surrounded by a scrum of reporters on the street as Conte met with the president, said the incoming prime minister would have full autonomy. He also said that for Conte, as for him, “the well-being of Italian citizens’’ came before European considerations.
Supporters and critics of the parties agreed that the prospect of populist and hard-right forces running Italy — the birthplace of fascism, a founding member of the European Union, and the bloc’s fourth-largest economy — was a remarkable moment on the Continent. It was also one all but unforeseen even four years ago, when Europe looked to Italy as a bastion of liberal values and center-left politics.
The turnabout has not only shattered Italy’s decades-old party system, it is also certain to give new energy to nationalist impulses and move the greatest threat to the EU’s cohesion from newer member states on the periphery, such as Hungary and Poland, to its very core.
“The wave of populists and anti-establishment forces is still on, and this will continue for the foreseeable future across Europe,’’ said Wolfango Piccoli, a political analyst and copresident of Teneo Intelligence.
Conte now needs to present his Cabinet choices to Mattarella, who has the power to reject individual ministers and is wary of empowering antagonists to the euro. But such a step is rare, and it is likely that Mattarella will approve the new government in the coming days.
Most worrying to many is the threat the new government’s agenda could pose to Italy’s finances: Analysts said the governing agreement announced last week was a potential budget-buster.
Conte’s debut on the national stage on Monday was not entirely smooth. Apparent exaggerations in his résumé, first reported by The New York Times, set off a deeply politicized debate about whether he should serve as prime minister.
But the populist leaders, Luigi Di Maio, 31, of the Five Star Movement, and Salvini, stuck with him, saying the alternative to Conte was new elections.
Five Star leaders also applied pressure, warning Mattarella against blocking the will of the people.
The 11th-hour deal between the two parties came after weeks of intense, and sometimes secretive, meetings between Di Maio and Salvini after the president threatened to impose a technocratic caretaker government.
Under a Five Star and League government, Italy would be the largest voice of such a group, an unwelcome development in Brussels. But the cold shoulder those leaders gave to Italy’s outgoing center-left government on migration only fueled anti-migrant anger that benefited the populists. As migrants kept coming, the anti-migrant League grew stronger. The Five Star Movement also took a harder line, though its core message addressed the economic frustration of young Italians.
Despite its difficulty governing cities, such as Rome, Five Star has gained electoral strength, in part because its studied vagueness on issues has avoided alienating voters on the left and right. Its leaders have questioned membership in the eurozone, supported it, and recently questioned it again. They say they want Italy to be more balanced in its foreign policy, but have grown closer to President Vladimir Putin of Russia.
The alliance’s governing contract was ratified in recent days by the parties’ bases. It includes proposals that critics say could erode Italy’s representative democracy, such as banning members of Parliament from switching parties, or from dissenting from the party line.
The League, a more traditional right-wing party with formal associations with France’s National Front and Putin’s Russia United Party, started as a northern separatist movement.
But under Salvini, the League’s traditional theme — the excoriation of the work ethic of Italian southerners — switched to rallying Italians against African migrants and Brussels bureaucrats.
