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A comment from a Guardian article on the Italian situation. Outlines various people involved and their organisational history…. hint: many are from Goldman Sachs:
“Italy’s written Constitution (1947) bans referenda on any international treaty, so no Italian voter has ever been directly consulted on any of the treaties of the EU since it started in Rome in 1957, not even the Euro. Italy’s Constitution also creates a bicameral structure of equal powers between the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, which has frequently stalemated the Italian Parliament. They also have some ‘Peers’ in Italy, whereby the President can appoint ‘Senators for Life’.

Following a decade of economic stagnation after joining the Euro at the Millennium, Berlusconi threatened to take Italy out of the Single Currency at an EU Conference in 2011 when Merkel and Sarkozy ganged up on him over the Fiscal Compact and publicly mocked him. Within days of his threat, telephone intercepts were released to the media in which Berlusconi had privately described Angela Merkel as ‘an ****** lard-****’, and he was quickly deposed from power and pursued for corruption to prevent him standing for re-election. (By apparent coincidence, the Head of the IMF, Dominic Strauss-Khan, was also removed at this time when his mobile phone was compromised, and he was pursued for sexual assault allegations, preventing him from standing as the anti-Euro Socialist candidate in the upcoming 2012 French Elections). The Italian President then appointed the former Italian PM and EU Commissioner for Financial Services (ex Goldman Sachs) Mario Monti as a technocratic PM, the very same Mario Monti in Brussels today proposing a raft of taxes for the next EU Budget to help bail out the Euro.

When Elections in Italy were allowed in 2013, the result was a hung Parliament under Prime Minister Letta, who was soon replaced by the Italian President in favour of Matteo Renzi, nicknamed ‘Merkenzi’, because of his closeness to Angela Merkel. He in turn proposed a new successor for President, Sergio Mattarella, an ally of former Italian Prime Minister and EU President, Romano Prodi, (ex-Goldman Sachs), responsible for introducing the Euro, despite members like Italy and Greece not meeting the convergence criteria (except by creative accounting and a river of Goldman Sachs credit default swaps).

Matteo Renzi sought constitutional reforms to speed up austerity measures and to abolish Italy’s CNEL (National Council for Economics and Labour) which was opposed to the kind of labour reforms that Hollande and Macron were undertaking in France using presidential decrees to bypass the French Parliament. The Italian Parliament was unable to muster enough votes to pass these reforms, so Renzi put them to a Constitutional Referendum in December 2016, and Italian voters rejected them on a 60/40 vote.

In new Elections in March this year, voters abandoned the Party of Matteo Renzi, breaking unevenly to Five Star and Lega, which both reject Euro austerity, but from different right and left perspectives. Their subsequent attempt to form a coalition led President Mattarella to nominate a mutually-agreeable candidate, Giuseppe Conte, last week. Article 92 of the Italian Constitution sets out his power:
“The President of the Republic nominates the Prime Minister and, on his proposal, the Ministers.”

But having nominated Giuseppe Conte as PM, he did not reciprocate in Mr Conte’s discretion to propose Paolo Savona as Minister of Finance, because Savona had described the Euro as ‘an historic mistake’. Mr Conte has understandably declined to become PM, and the President has turned to Carlo Cottarelli, a former Executive Director of the IMF (previously appointed by Matteo Renzi), and known as ‘Mr Scissors’ for cutting public spending. Mr Cottarelli said ten days ago there was ‘no possibility’ he would become PM.

The Italian President evidently doesn’t want another Election before 2019, to avoid clashing with the end of Brexit negotiations, supposed to be finished by October, and the last thing Brussels wants is a controversial Election in Italy on the Euro, which could seriously compromise their negotiating position on Brexit.”