Italy referendum: 'Period of uncertainty' predicted after Matteo Renzi's defeat – as it happened

Here’s a roundup of the latest on Italy’s referendum and its aftermath:

• Matteo Renzi is preparing to formally submit his resignation after voters dismissed his plans for constitutional reform in a crushing referendum that saw close to 60% of voters opt for “no”. He said “My experience in government ends here … I did all I could to bring this to victory. Renzi has called a cabinet meeting for 1730 GMT, after which he said he would tender his resignation.
• The margin of the rejection– close to 20 percentage points – was much wider than expected. On a high turnout of 65.47%, 59.11% of voters chose no; 40.89% went for yes. Overseas voters bucked the trend, voting overwhelmingly (64.7%) for yes.
  
• The vote prompted the euro to initially fall to a 20-month low against the dollar and then bounce back to its highest level since mid-November. But shares in Italian banks have tumbled.
  
• Shares in the world’s oldest bank - Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena - fell sharply. Concerns about MPS were raised during the stress tests on the sector by the European Banking Authority in July, when the bank was ranked as the weakest of the 51 European institutions subjected to the annual assessment.
• France’s far right leader Marine Le Pen has welcomed the Italian referendum as an anti-austerity signal to France. She said: “After the Greek referendum, after Brexit, this Italian No adds a new people to the list of those who would like to turn their backs on absurd European policies which are plunging the continent into poverty.”
• Italy might have to spend public money to rescue some of its banks, according to European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny. “The difference between Italy and other states such as Germany and Austria is that, until now, in Italy there has not been any significant state aid or state takeovers (of banks),” he said.
• Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, admitted that the result was a “concern’. But finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says Italy should continue with Renzi’s economic policies. “Italy has to continue the path that Prime Minister Renzi has taken economically and politically”, he said.
• The referendum – which was on questions of constitutional reform not the euro or EU – was nonetheless seized upon by populist groups including the Five Star movement and the anti-immigration Northern League (Lega Nord), which called for snap elections.
• Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s far right Northern League party, has hailed the referendum result as Italy’s ‘liberation day’ from the Renzi government. He said it sent a message to Europe.
• European commissioners and finance ministers put a brave face on the result. Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, said he had “full confidence in Italian authorities to manage this situation”. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, said: “The referendum wasn’t about Europe.”
• Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella is thought unlikely to call fresh elections but is instead expected to appoint a caretaker prime minister. Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan, culture minister Dario Franceschini and Senate president Pietro Grasso are the names most commonly touted.

Renzi has called a cabinet meeting for 1730 GMT, after which he said he would tender his resignation.

Reuters looks at the possible contenders to succeed him and what happens next:

Economy Minister Pier Carlo Padoan, who has pulled out of meetings with European finance ministers in Brussels this week, is viewed as a possible candidate to replace Renzi.

Senate President Pietro Grasso and Transport Minister Graziano Delrio have also been tipped as possible successors.

It is unclear if Renzi will have enough support in his Democratic Party (PD) to remain party leader - a role that could give him a say in who becomes the next prime minister.

President Sergio Mattarella will consult with party leaders before naming a new prime minister - the fourth successive head of government to be appointed without an electoral mandate, a fact that underscores the fragility of Italy’s political system.

In the meantime, Renzi would stay on as caretaker.

The new prime minister, who will need the backing of Renzi’s PD to take office, will have to draw up a new electoral law, with the Five Star Movement urging a swift deal to open the way for elections in early 2017, a year ahead of schedule.

“From tomorrow, we will start work on putting together 5-Star’s future programme and the team of people that will make up a future government,” said Luigi Di Maio, tipped to be the group’s prime ministerial candidate.

Opinion polls put 5-Star neck-and-neck with the PD.

Shares in Italian banks are significantly down notes analyst and commentator Ferdi Giugliano.

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Pier Carlo Padoan, Italy’s finance minister and leading contender to replace Renzi, has told European finance leaders that Italy cannot make commitments for extra funds for the 2017 budget.

He cited the “political situation” in Italy, according Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the head of the group of 19 countries that use the euro.

Earlier Dijsselbloem said there is no need for “emergency steps” after Italian voters rejected constitutional reforms.

He told reporters in Brussels that “it doesn’t really change the situation economically in Italy or in the Italian banks. It doesn’t seem to require any emergency steps.”

Stephanie Kirchgaessner picks out some interesting variations in the way Italians living abroad voted out:

5 Dec 201609.08 EST

MPS shares fall

Jill Treanor

Shares in the world’s oldest bank - Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena - have fallen after the vote, writes the Guardian’s city editor Jill Treanor.

Investors in MPS, which was founded in 1472, fear the resignation of Matteo Renzi as prime minister will affect attempts to clinch a €5bn (£4.2bn) lifeline from investors by the end of the year. The shares plunged 10% before recovering some losses. They were trading 3% lower at around midday in London.

Concerns about MPS were raised during the stress tests on the sector by the European Banking Authority in July, when the bank was ranked as the weakest of the 51 European institutions subjected to the annual assessment.

A consortium led by JP Morgan, the Wall Street investment bank, is reportedly meeting to discuss the fundraising. There were also reports that Monte dei Paschi bank officials will meet the Qatar Investment Authority – the gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund – to try to secure backing from a key investor.

Even so, there are expectations that the Italian government will need to prop up the bank, despite new EU rules which prevent state aid unless bondholders have been forced to take losses.

Alberto Chiandetti, a manager at the Fidelity European Opportunities and Fidelity Funds Italy investment funds, said: “The focus is on whether an anchor investor will materialise or not. If not, Monte Paschi needs a plan B and in that scenario, bank shares are likely to suffer most. We should know [on Monday] whether such an anchor investor exists for Monte Paschi.”

The prospects of a capital injection for MPS being found entirely from private investors appeared to be receding, analysts said. “I think a precautionary recapitalisation is ultimately still probable as a private sector-only solution is now highly unlikely to work,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director of Eurasia Group.

Our former Paris correspondent Lizzy Davies has a better translation of Le Pen’s reaction to the Italian referendum.

Welcoming the “huge No” to Renzi’s proposals, Le Pen said it was “a No to the absurd policy of ultra-austerity which Matteo Renzi pursued, a policy wanted by the European Union and imposed on Italy.”

The “austerity purge” in Italy had led to no economic gain, Le Pen claimed, using the referendum result to attack her opponents in France, particularly François Fillon, the right’s Thatcherite presidential candidate, who Le Pen said would like to “speed up” austerity.

She added: “After the Greek referendum, after Brexit, this Italian No adds a new people to the list of those who would like to turn their backs on absurd European policies which are plunging the continent into poverty. More broadly - and the impressive growth of the [far-right] Freedom Party in Austria shows just this - the global rejection of all the European Union’s policies, its economic and migration ones in particular, is speeding up on the continent.

“It is time that France chose someone capable of being the leader of a Europe of nations and freedoms, able to coalesce the energy of all countries which reject an austerity-led, free trade-supporting and pro-immigration political model.”

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Italy’s former prime minister, Mario Monti, predicts there will be no early elections and that a new centre-left government will be formed and return Italy to a policy of fiscal tightening.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme, Monti said: “I do not believe there will be early elections. I’m convinced that the president of the republic, in his wisdom, will find a solution within the space of the current political majority of the centre left.”

He said there was no need for alarm. “In the financial markets the reactions are considerably cooler than many feared,” Monti said.

He claimed that in the last 18 months, Renzi’s government had relaxed fiscal policy a “bit too much” in the hope of winning the referendum.

Monti, who backed a no vote, added: “With the distraction of the referendum over, there may well be a refocussing of economic policy on its core business which is not that of creating a favourable consensus.”

Monti said the no vote was not the result of populist sentiment. “It would be inappropriate to see this result as another victory for populism. Prime minister Renzi himself had played the populist card quite strongly from the top, particularly against the European Union.”

Monti argued the voters demonstrated maturity in rejecting money being transferred by the state to the banks.

He also denied that the vote was a rejection of the euro. “Among the parties which recommended the no vote, there is the Five Star Movement and separately they say that if they were in majority government one day they would promote a referendum for Italy to go out of the euro. But I know so many people who voted no though being fervent pro-Europeans.”

Before the vote, Monti argued that there was no reason for Renzi to resign if he lost the referendum. But in his interview Monti said: “the negative outcome for him was so massive that I understand and respect his immediate [decision to] resign.”

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France’s far right leader Marine Le Pen has welcomed the Italy referendum and claims it boosts her chances of becoming France’s next president.

In a statement the Front National leader said the result was a signal to France. She claimed her key opponent in the presidential election François Fillon backed Renzi and his austerity policies

She said after Brexit and the Greek referendum, Italy was the latest country “to turn its backs on absurd European policies that are plunging the continent into misery.”

She added: “It is time that France chooses a leader who can be the leader of free Europe of nations, able to unite the energy of all these countries in rejecting a political project based on austerity, free-market and immigration.”

Matteo Renzi is preparing to formally submit his resignation before Italy’s president, writes Stephanie Kirchgaessner in her latest roundup from Rome.

Renzi conceded shortly after midnight on Monday and is expected to head to the presidential palace, the Quirinale, on Monday afternoon.

The anti-establishment Five Star Movement (M5S) and the Northern League quickly sought to capitalise on Renzi’s defeat and say they want snap elections, even before a planned reform of electoral laws is to go ahead.

Luigi Di Maio, one of the M5S’s rising stars, declared that the populist movement was ready to create the future government, while the xenophobic Northern League head, Matteo Salvini, said his fringe party – which has its roots in secessionism – ought to be considered a “serious alternative”. Salvini called the result – and the strong showing of the far right Austrian party in elections yesterday, which it ultimately lost – a clash of “all against one”.

Theres’ no need to panic or hyperventilate argues analyst Vincenzo Scarpetta. In a blogpost for the Open Europe thinktank he writes:

European politics is slightly more complex than dominos. What took place in Italy yesterday was neither a general election nor a referendum on the single currency. Either would likely be a different proposition. The ‘No’ camp was a very broad church. This makes me wary of describing the result simply as ‘Renzi being brought down by the populist wave’ – unless we want to describe Mario Monti or former Italian Constitutional Court President Valerio Onida (to mention but two examples) as populists for being against the reform.

There was certainly an anti-establishment (and anti-Renzi) element involved, but one should also bear in mind that – beyond the headlines and the slogans – the proposed constitutional changes did raise some genuine issues and proved more controversial than many seem to appreciate.

Undeniably, Renzi’s resignation opens a period of greater political fluidity during which the reform process in Italy will slow down – and that will be regarded as bad news in Brussels, Berlin, and other European capitals. However, as I already wrote last week, the framework is completely different from late 2011 and there are simply too many unknowns at this stage to predict – as some are doing – that the next Italian general election will certainly open the door to an anti-euro government in the Eurozone’s third-largest country.

Here’s a roundup of the latest on Italy’s referendum and its aftermath:

• Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has said he will resign on Monday after voters dismissed his plans for constitutional reform in a crushing referendum that saw close to 60% of voters opt for “no”. He said: “My experience in government ends here … I did all I could to bring this to victory. If you fight for an idea, you cannot lose.”
• Though Renzi had been predicted to lose, the margin – close to 20 percentage points – was much wider than expected. On a high turnout of 65.47%, 59.11% of voters chose no; 40.89% went for yes. Overseas voters bucked the trend, voting overwhelmingly (64.7%) for yes.
• Renzi’s departure – and the prospect of politically uncertain months ahead – prompted the euro to initially fall to a 20-month low against the dollar. But after early losses it bounced back to its highest level since mid-November after traders realised there was little prospect of Italy leaving the single currency.
  
• Italy might have to spend public money to rescue some of its banks, according to European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny. “The difference between Italy and other states such as Germany and Austria is that, until now, in Italy there has not been any significant state aid or state takeovers (of banks),” he said.
• Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, admitted that the result was a “concern’. But finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says Italy should continue with Renzi’s economic policies. “Italy has to continue the path that Prime Minister Renzi has taken economically and politically”, he said.
• The referendum – which was on questions of constitutional reform not the euro or EU – was nonetheless seized upon by populist groups including the Five Star movement and the anti-immigration Northern League (Lega Nord), which called for snap elections.
• Matteo Salvini, head of Italy’s far right Northern League party, has hailed the referendum result as Italy’s ‘liberation day’ from the Renzi government. He said it sent a message to Europe.
• European commissioners and finance ministers put a brave face on the result. Pierre Moscovici, the European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, said he had “full confidence in Italian authorities to manage this situation”. French Finance Minister Michel Sapin, said: “The referendum wasn’t about Europe.”
• Italy’s president Sergio Mattarella is thought unlikely to call fresh elections but is instead expected to appoint a caretaker prime minister. Finance minister Pier Carlo Padoan, culture minister Dario Franceschini and Senate president Pietro Grasso are the names most commonly touted.

More brave faces have been put on Italy referendum’s from the European establishment.

The Markets expected Renzi to be defeated in the referendum so priced in the outcome, according to Reuters. But they were surprised by the scale of the defeat hence the initial fall in the value of the euro.

Luigi Scazzieri, an analyst at the Centre for European Reform, argues that the vote is unlikely to lead of more instability in Europe. Writing for the Guardian’s Opinion section he says:

A new government would likely be made up of the same political majority currently supporting Renzi, with the possible addition of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party. It would face the same challenges and would continue to act in much the same way, steering the country towards new elections in late 2017 or 2018 and pursuing the stony path of incremental economic reform. Indeed, while Renzi sought to portray the reforms as a make or break moment for Italy, the economic reforms of the past five years are not about to be undone.

A takeover by the populist Five Star Movement is unlikely either now or in the next election. The movement may run out of steam, as it increasingly becomes embroiled in political mishaps arising from its administration of Rome and Turin. Crucially, planned electoral reforms are likely to lead a form of proportional representation that will make it difficult for any single party to form a government. The continuation of coalition governments will exclude the Five Star Movement, which refuses to take part in them.

And any new Italian government is likely to behave in the same way as Renzi’s government did towards its European allies, seeking to bend fiscal rules in its favour and to press for a more expansive fiscal policy. It will also continue to demand solidarity from the EU with its efforts to deal with migrants and to rebuild the areas affected by recent earthquakes. Italy is unlikely to be the domino that leads to more instability in Europe.

Paul Mason, Guardian columnist and author of Postcapitalism, is buoyed by the referendum result in Italy and the presidential election in Austria.

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-right Northern League, says the result – alongside the “hair’s breadth” defeat of far-right Freedom party candidate Norbert Hofer in Austria – sends a message to the EU.

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Italy might have to spend public money to rescue some of its banks, including by taking stakes in them, according to European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny.

“The difference between Italy and other states such as Germany and Austria is that, until now, in Italy there has not been any significant state aid or state takeovers (of banks),” Reuters quoted him saying.

Nowotny, who heads Austria’s central bank, added: “It therefore cannot be ruled out that it will be necessary for the state to take stakes (in banks) in some way.”

Follow the latest market reaction here:

BuzzFeed’s Italian Europe editor Alberto Nardelli cautions against playing down the referendum result: