Italy's Renzi proposes 15-month deal with Letta to boost recovery

Italian centre-left Democratic Party (PD) leader Matteo Renzi proposed a "15-month deal" with Prime Minister Enrico Letta on Sunday, in order to implement all the needed reforms to revamp the country's sluggish economy. The statement came as Renzi addressed the PD National Assembly here for the first time since he was elected new party secretary with a 68-percent of vote on Dec. 8. "We need to make a German-style agreement, a pact on a clear working-agenda for the next 12-15 months," Renzi said. The idea seemed to be welcomed by Letta, who also belongs to the Democratic Party and leads a left-right coalition government in which the PD is the main ruling force. "Together we can be unbeatable," Letta said at the meeting referring to the new party secretary. "Despite the deep internal struggle we have been through only few months ago, PD is a pillar of Italian democracy, and we must be well aware that the exit of the country from the political and economic crisis depends heavily upon the unity of our party," Letta pointed out. Renzi clearly set two priorities for this cooperation with the prime minister: employment and reform of the electoral law. "Our lawmakers must help us in defining a huge plan to boost employment and reform the job market rules, which are the most unintelligible," Renzi declared before the party's representatives, setting a timeline horizon of one month for the task. He added that Parliament would be compelled to define the long-needed electoral system's reform, otherwise "politics will loose face before the country." Renzi, 38-year-old mayor of Florence, has been seen for long as a "fastidious outsider" by the most traditional ranks of the left. His landslide victory in the primary election for the PD's secretary, however, appears to have boosted consensus for the centre-left alliance. A recent SWG Institute poll showed support for centre-left forces increased by six points only few days after Renzi's election. In a snap election they would win 40.5 percent while conservative centre-right forces, led by former premier Silvio Berlusconi, would lag behind with 33.6 percent. Support for the PD also increased from 29.6 of the week before Renzi's election to 35.6 percent after his victory, the SWG pool showed. The question still lingering among politicians and analysts in Italy was now about the government's future: would Renzi's victory boost consensus for the cabinet as well, or rather undermine it? The proposal of a German-style pact seems to outline a different path, a sort of "leadership tandem" between Renzi and Letta at least for the time being. It would secure the cabinet's fate for the remaining 15 months before the legislature's end, giving more time both to lawmakers for implementing reforms and to Renzi's PD for consolidating his new consensus.