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Giuseppe Conte in June 2020 - at that time still as Prime Minister
Photo: Paolo Tre / imago images / Insidefoto
Italy's non-party ex-prime minister Giuseppe Conte is on his way back into politics after his resignation in January.
On Sunday afternoon he met with leading politicians of the Five Star Movement for a round of deliberations on the party's future in Rome.
"Giuseppe Conte has accepted the invitation to develop a project to re-establish the five-star movement in the coming days," it said after the meeting on the party's Facebook page.
Conte was always close to the anti-establishment party.
From among its members, he was brought into play as the ideal candidate for the chairmanship.
Agriculture Minister Stefano Patuanelli, who belongs to the party, told the newspaper "La Repubblica" that Conte had the right profile for a start-up.
He is the only one who is able to unite the different currents of the Five Star Movement.
Even party founder and comedian Beppe Grillo, who appeared at the summit on Sunday wearing an astronaut helmet, is said to be behind Conte, according to media reports.
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The movement has been looking for new leadership for more than a year.
Because of the corona pandemic, the strongest force in parliament postponed the election of a chairman.
Most recently, there was rumbling in the party when several politicians, contrary to what had been agreed, voted against the government of the new Prime Minister Mario Draghi in the two-chamber parliament's vote of confidence.
Before that, Conte was in power.
His center-left alliance lost its majority after the small party Italia Viva left in mid-January.
Conte resigned as premier a short time later.
He returned to his job as a lecturer in private law at the University of Florence, where he gave a lecture last Friday on his political experiences in the pandemic.
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bah / dpa
