The head of Italy’s opposition Democratic Party (PD), Nicola Zingaretti, said on Wednesday he had accepted that Giuseppe Conte should return as the prime minister of a new government.


Addressing the PD’s executive body ahead of a meeting with the head of state later in the day, Zingaretti asked for a mandate from his party to tell President Mattarella that he wanted to form a government with the 5-Star Movement.


“We decided to agree to Conte as prime minister because that was what 5-Star wanted,” Zingaretti said, in his first open acknowledgement that the PD had dropped a previous veto against Conte.


At the end of his speech, the PD executive overwhelmingly supported his request for a mandate to form a new coalition.