During a visit to Germany on Wednesday, Italy's premier Paolo Gentiloni hailed the breakthrough deal struck between Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU alliance and the Social Democrats (SPD), calling it "important".
“It is important that agreement has been reached on a coalition governent in Germany," Gentiloni said in a speech on Italian-German relations at Berlin's Humbolt university.
"And it is an important result for stability - in Europe and in Italy," he said.
Gentiloni cut short his official visit after Merkel postponed a meeting with him until 15 February when the marathon negotiations between the CDU, CSU and SPD stretched into Wednesday from a weekend deadline.
Merkel reportedly phoned Gentiloni herself to tell him that she needed to delay their meeting.
Gentiloni is currently in the middle of an election campaign ahead of 4 March polls in which his ruling centre-left Democratic Party is trailing the populist Five-Star Movement and a conservative bloc led by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Merkel's centre-right CDU party and its Bavarian CSU ally failed to form a government after inconclusive polls on 24 September last year.
