Conte stepped down on Tuesday after weeks of political turmoil weakened his coalition government, but he is hoping to return at the helm of a strengthened government.
Mattarella, the ultimate authority of Italian politics, asked Conte to stay on while he establishes if this is viable – or if someone else should take over.
Conte, who cancelled a scheduled speech to the World Economic Forum Wednesday, said after his resignation that Italy required “a clear perspective and a government with a larger and safer majority”.
“My resignation serves this possibility: the formation of a new government that can offer a prospect of national salvation,” he wrote on Facebook on Tuesday.
So far the other major parties in the ruling coalition – the Five Star Movement (M5S), the centre-left Democratic Party (PD) and the left-wing Free and Equal (LeU) group – are in favour of Conte forming a new government, which would be his third since he came into power in 2018.
There is also the possibility that the old coalition could be reformed but under a different prime minister, or that the country could hold snap elections.
Opinion polls suggest that, in the case of snap elections, the right-wing opposition coalition, which includes Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia (FI) and Matteo Salvini’s far-right League, would win power.
For now, Italy has been left with a vacuum at the top of government while it is trying to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent economic crisis.
