New Italian PM Wins Confidence Vote

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi won his first confidence vote in parliament, pledging to cut labour taxes, free up funds for investment in schools and pass wide institutional reforms to tackle Italy’s economic malaise.

Facing parliament for the first time, the 39-year-old Renzi who is Italy’s youngest premier, sketched out an ambitious program of change in an hour-long speech delivered in his trademark quickfire style interspersed with occasional jeers from the opposition benches.
“If we lose this challenge, the fault will be mine alone,” he told the Senate. The euro zone’s third-largest economy is in urgent need of potentially painful reforms and is weighed down by a 2-trillion-euro public debt.

Backed by his own center-left Democratic Party (PD), the small center-right NCD party, centrists and other minor groups, Renzi won the backing of the upper house by 169 votes to 139 in a vote taken in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The outgoing mayor of Florence, who won the leadership of the PD in December, forced his party rival Letta to resign as prime minister earlier this month after repeatedly criticizing his government’s record.

via CNBC

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