ROME, Dec 10 (Reuters) – European partners heaped praise on
outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Monday, and
called for the next government to stick to his reform agenda
after his surprise decision to resign rattled financial markets.

Monti’s weekend announcement that he would step down early -
made after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party
withdrew its support for his technocrat government – pushed up
Italy’s borrowing costs and prompted a stock market
sell-off.

ROME (Reuters) – European partners heaped praise on outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Monday, and called for the next government to stick to his reform agenda after his surprise decision to resign rattled financial markets.

Monti’s weekend announcement that he would step down early – made after former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s PDL party withdrew its support for his technocrat government – pushed up Italy’s borrowing costs and prompted a stock market sell-off.

ROME (Reuters) – Pier Luigi Bersani, the determinedly prosaic leader of Italy’s Democratic Party, promised supporters he would not tell them “fairy tales”, after his overwhelming victory at a primary to pick the center-left candidate in next year’s election.

The 61-year-old former communist and practicing Catholic crushed Matteo Renzi, the 37-year-old mayor of Florence who campaigned on a platform of party renewal and generational change.

ROME, Nov 26 (Reuters) – Former Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi said on Monday he was considering a political
comeback for elections expected in March, but that the decision
depended on who his centre-left adversaries selected as their
main candidate.

A centre-left primary contest on Sunday left Democratic
Party (PD) leader Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, ahead of his younger
rival Matteo Renzi before a final runoff on Dec. 2, thanks
mainly to his strong support among traditional PD voters.

ROME, Nov 22 (Reuters) – According to a popular YouTube
parody, supporters of Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of Italy’s
Democratic Party, are the kind of people who mentally convert
euros into lira, grip the steering wheel while driving and try,
in vain, to break up fights.

But for all his image of slightly hapless decency, the 61
year-old former communist, who has led Italy’s biggest
centre-left force since 2009, is favoured to become its
candidate for prime minister in next year’s election.

ROME (Reuters) – Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti, drafted in unelected to haul Italy from crisis a year ago, said on Sunday that a new government appointed after next year’s election would have to keep up his reform agenda to retain the confidence of investors.

Monti, who has kept up a carefully neutral stance about his own role in next year’s election, told reporters during a visit to Kuwait that he could not say what would happen after the vote, expected on March 10.

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s centre-left rivals Pier Luigi Bersani and Matteo Renzi faced off on Monday in a game show-style television debate to help decide who will run in next year’s election as candidate to succeed Prime Minister Mario Monti.

The debate, before a primary on November 25, comes at a time of exceptional uncertainty in Italian politics, with neither of the traditional big parties clear about who will lead them nor even what electoral law will apply at the ballot box.

ROME, Nov 8 (Reuters) – Global supply of key cereal staples
including wheat is to tighten sharply in the 2012/13 crop season
as wheat and maize output feels the pinch of the worst U.S.
drought in more than half a century, data from the United
Nations food agency showed.

Separate figures indicated a slight easing of pressure on
overall food prices on Thursday, but the Food and Agriculture
Organisation’s (FAO) global index stayed close to levels seen in
the 2008 crisis when food riots broke out in some countries.

ROME (Reuters) – Italy’s main banking association urged politicians campaigning for next year’s election to respect budget pledges made to European partners and to back reforms.

The comments follow a threat on Saturday by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to withdraw the parliamentary support of his People of Freedom party (PDL) from the government led by technocrat Mario Monti.

MADRID/ROME, Oct 29 (Reuters) – Italian political turmoil
and Spanish hesitancy over seeking euro zone assistance put the
two countries on the front line of the currency area’s debt
crisis back under market pressure on Monday as their leaders met
in Madrid.

Former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s weekend threat to
bring down his successor Mario Monti’s government, and regional
elections in Sicily in which a protest party led by a stand-up
comic polled strongly, highlighted the political risks in Italy.