Italy’s New Populist Government Articulates Vision, but Few Specifics

Italy’s economic development and labor minister, Luigi Di Maio, left, and interior minister, Matteo Salvini, right, congratulated Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte after his speech on Tuesday.CreditAngelo Carconi/ANSA, via Associated Press

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte of Italy on Tuesday called his country’s new government proudly populist and anti-establishment as he outlined a sweeping, if unspecific, vision for overhauling its migration system, renegotiating its relationship with Europe and moving closer to Russia.

Mr. Conte said the new government “brought a radical change that we are proud of.”

The label populism, he said, fit “if populism is the attitude of the ruling class to listen to the people’s needs,” while the label anti-establishment fit “if anti-system means aiming at introducing a new system able to remove old privileges and encrusted power.”

Mr. Conte, a little-known lawyer whose debut on the national stage was met with a controversy about embellishment to his résumé, presented a laundry list of problems that the government would confront. They included the mafia, conflicts of interest, Italy’s slow health care system, its creaky, byzantine bureaucracy, jobs, youth unemployment, pensions, the environment, brain drain, overtaxation and just about every ill of Italian society.

But he offered few concrete details on how his government would realize the proposals in his speech, before a successful confidence vote in the Senate.