The far-right League party leader Matteo Salvini met a delegation of lawmakers from the populist Five-Star Movement on Friday in a bid to resolve the current deadlock over the election of speakers for the new parliament elected on 4 March, Adnkronos has learned.
No candidate reached the required 420 votes - two-thirds of seats - needed in the first or second ballots in the 630-seat chamber.
A two-thirds majority is needed to elect the new speaker in the first three rounds of voting, after which an absolute majority suffices.
The Senate also failed to elect a speaker in the first ballot. Over 300 blank ballots were cast in the 315-seat chamber, which also counts six life Senators.
Salvini said League Senators had voted for Forza Italia's Anna Maria Bernini out of "a sense of responsibility" aimed at "getting out of the mire".
A deal between the centre right, including the far-right League, and the grassroots Five-Star Movement to give the Senate speakership to the former and the House to the latter party broke down Thursday.
Five-Star rejected the League's centre-right alliance partner Forza Italia's candidate for Senate speaker, the former Senate Whip Paolo Romani, who has a binding conviction for embezzlement.
Premier Paolo Gentiloni moved to reassure investors on Friday, saying markets were not alarmed by the political stalemate following the inconclusive national election that led to a hung parliament.
Both Five Star, as the largest single party after the vote, and the League, the leader of the winning centre-right coalition, are laying claim to a first bid to form a government.
President Sergio Mattarella is due to start his consultations with party leaders in early April, one of whom he will invite to try and form a coalition government.
