Berlusconi also said he is ready to renew his centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, the junior partner in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's right wing government.

The 86-year-old media magnate and three-time ex-prime minister was admitted on April 5 for the lung infection linked to a previously undisclosed case of chronic leukaemia.

He spent 12 days in intensive care before being transferred to an ordinary ward, where convalesced until being discharged on Friday.

“I'm better. It has been tough, but I was always confident. I entrusted myself to Heaven and to the professionalism of the doctors,” Berlusconi told Monday's edition of Corriere della Sera, Italy’s biggest selling non-sports daily.

The media billionaire, who had a heart operation in 2016 and has been in and out of hospital with COVID and long COVID in recent years, paid tribute to his partner Marta Fascina, a 33-year-old FI MP, for helping him through his latest health scare.

“Marta surpassed herself, she has been beside me with a care and dedication without equal,” he said.

“I perceived this time too the friendship and sincere affection, sometimes actually moving, of many people, even strangers.”

Berlusconi said he had “never stopped working” and had led the campaign for the recent local elections across Italy from his hospital room.

Asked if he might reorganise the party ahead of European Parliament elections in June 2024, the ex-prime minister replied: “FI’s history is one of continuous renewal. But for it to be credible we must first renew ourselves.

“We will continue to do so, without scrapping anybody.

“FI has an experienced and authoritative national and local managerial class. But they are not and will not be alone, because I will continue to exercise fully my responsibilities as founder and leader.”

Finally, Berlusconi said relations with FI’s government partners, Meloni's right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) and Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini’s right-wing League party, were “absolutely excellent”.

He said that FI could now focus on grabbing more of the centre ground in Italian politics “with the (centre-left Democratic Party, PD) shifting ever further to the left and the demise of the so-called Third Pole (centrist political party)”.

ANSA