South Tyrol gets new center-right coalition
Published: Wednesday, Jan 17th 2024, 09:21
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Almost three months after the parliamentary elections in South Tyrol, the largest coalition to date has been signed and sealed. The South Tyrolean People's Party (SVP), which has been in power in the largely German-speaking province for 75 years, agreed on a new center-right alliance with four other partners on Wednesday.
This includes the German-speaking South Tyrolean Freedom Party as well as the three parties Fratelli d'Italia, Lega and Civica, which have an Italian background. The current provincial governor Arno Kompatscher (SVP) is to remain head of government.
In principle, all parties involved had been in agreement since the beginning of the year. However, the composition of the government and the distribution of ministerial posts were still disputed. An agreement has now also been reached on this, as the new partners jointly announced. The SVP had dominated politics in South Tyrol for many decades. In the elections at the end of October, however, it plummeted to a historic low of 34.5 percent. The new coalition has 19 out of 35 seats in the parliament in Bolzano.
For the first time, another German-speaking party is now part of the government there. There are also three Italian partners: the right-wing parties Fratelli d'Italia and Lega, both of which are also in government together in Rome, as well as the small Civica. Previously, a two-party alliance of SVP and Lega governed in Bolzano. Due to the autonomy statute, at least one party from the Italian part of the population is always represented in the government in South Tyrol, where both German and Italian are official languages.
South Tyrol has around 530,000 inhabitants. Two thirds of them have German as their mother tongue. The province is one of the wealthiest parts of Italy. Bolzano is one of the most expensive cities.
©Keystone/SDA
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