With the appointment of Italy's new finance minister Giovanni Tria, conservative ex-premier and convicted fraudster Silvio Berlusconi - supposedly shunned by the grassroots Five-Star Movement - is entering the populist government, a prominent centre-left politician said Friday.
"Tria? He's a very good Forza Italia economist," Ettore Rosato told Radio Radicale ahead of the new government's swearing-in.
"I don't believe Tria was appointed by chance," added Rosato, who is one of the founding members of the Democratic Party (PD), which has ruled Italy since 2013.
The PD vowed to go into opposition after it came a distant third in Italy's inconclusive 4 March national election in which the populist Five-Star party and the conservative alliance led by the eurosceptic League party came out on top.
Tria - who favours keeping Italy in the single European currency - replaces the populists' original choice of eurosceptic economist Paolo Savona as finance minister after he was rejected by Italy's president Sergio Mattarella.
The pro-European Mattarella cited investor concerns at home and abroad as the reason for his rare veto.
Savona will serve as European Affairs minister in the Five-Star-League anti-austerity government, whose expansionary economic programme has roiled markets and alarmed Europe.
