Holding public office is by definition challenging, but Italy’s finance minister, Giovanni Tria, carries a particularly heavy load. He has to find ways to fund the expensive plans of his government, such as the so-called citizenship income and the reduction of the pensionable age, which, for a country saddled with a heavy public debt, expensive debt servicing and experiencing barely any growth, is an onerous task.
To make matters worse, the confrontational attitude of the coalition government’s leaders, Luigi Di Maio of the populist Five Star Movement and the far-right Northern League’s Matteo Salvini, towards Europe and, often, towards each other, have rattled the markets, spiking bond yields and making government borrowing more expensive.