By Stefania Fumo
ROME, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Italian President Sergio Mattarella told the rightwing League and the populist Five Star Movement on Monday that they can have more time to iron out their differences and come up with a joint government.
Monday's meetings with Mattarella came after a weekend of intensive talks between the two parties, which emerged as the two relative winners of Italy's inconclusive March 4 general election.
Both League leader Matteo Salvini and Five Star chief Luigi Di Maio declined to say whether they had agreed on a cabinet line-up or on who should be prime minister.
In televised remarks after meeting with the president, Di Maio said "we are satisfied with the climate" of the talks and that the two parties have agreed on rolling back an unpopular pension reform, introducing a basic income, cutting government waste, fighting corruption, and jail terms for tax evaders.
A 780-euro (930 U.S. dollars) monthly basic income for the poor and the unemployed is the flagship pledge of the Five Star Movement, which made massive gains in the chronically impoverished South, where unemployment is three times the national rate of around 11 percent.
Salvini said that while there is agreement on many issues, differences remain on immigration and European Union (EU) policy.
"The League must be given free rein to defend the security of Italian citizens and to dismantle the illegal immigration business," he said.
"We are also committed to passing a law on self-defense," Salvini said. This is a big issue with conservative Italian voters. Under current law, residents who injure or kill intruders during a home invasion are tried for murder as there is no self-defense exception.
Another sticking point, Salvini said, is "the new position of Italy in Europe", adding that he wants to defend "Italian jobs, made-in-Italy, farming, and fishing" and would want to renegotiate some EU constraints on public spending.
The League, which campaigned under the slogan "More Jobs, More Security, Fewer Taxes, Less Immigration" and which made huge inroads in the wealthier, more industrialized North, has promised a 15 percent flat tax for incomes of up to 80,000 euros a year and of 20 percent for incomes above 80,000 a year.
Critics say that both parties campaigned on promises that are impossible to maintain without driving the country into further crippling debt.
According to the Italian Public Accounts (CPI) Observatory directed by influential economist Carlo Cottarelli, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) executive, the Five-Star spending program would cost 103.4 billion euros but only contains 39.2 billion in coverage, while the League program would come with a 136.2-billion-euro price tag but accounts for coverage of just 82.4 billion euros.
The Five-Star program would drive public debt up to 138.4 percent of GDP by 2022, and the League program would raise it to 137.1 percent, according to the CPI Observatory.
Italy's public debt stood at 2.7 trillion euros or 131.8 percent of GDP at the end of 2017, down 0.2 percent compared to 2016, according to ISTAT national statistics institute.
Italy has one of the highest public debt rates in the eurozone, where that figure stood at 86.7 percent of GDP at the end of 2017, according to EU statistics agency EUROSTAT.
