Lega Nord in the context of "Union for Europe of the Nations"

Giuseppe Conte (Italian pronunciation: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈkonte]; born 8 August 1964) is an Italian jurist, academic, and politician who served as prime minister of Italy from June 2018 to February 2021. He has been the president of the Five Star Movement (M5S) since August 2021.

Conte spent the greater part of his career as a private law professor and was also a member of the Italian Bureau of Administrative Justice from 2013 to 2018. Following the 2018 Italian general election, he was proposed as the independent leader of a coalition government between the M5S and the League, despite his having never held any political position before. After both parties agreed on a programme of government, he was sworn in as prime minister on 1 June by President Sergio Mattarella, appointing the M5S and League leaders as his joint deputies. In August 2019, the League filed a motion of no confidence in the coalition government and Conte offered to resign as prime minister; the M5S and the Democratic Party agreed to form a new government, with Conte remaining at its head. This made Conte the first prime minister to lead two separate Italian governments made up of right-wing and left-wing coalition partners.

General elections were held in Italy on 5 and 6 April 1992. They were the first without the traditionally second most important political force in Italian politics, the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which had been disbanded in 1991. Most of its members split between the more democratic socialist-oriented Democratic Party of the Left (PDS), while a minority who did not want to renounce the communist tradition became the Communist Refoundation Party (PRC); between them, they gained around 4% less than what the already declining PCI had obtained in the 1987 Italian general election, despite PRC absorbing the disbanded Proletarian Democracy (DP).

The other major feature was the sudden rise of the Northern League (LN), a federalist party that increased its vote from 0.5% of the preceding elections to more than 8%, increasing from a single member both in the Chamber and the Senate to 55 and 25, respectively. The "long wave" (onda lunga) of Bettino Craxi's now centrist-oriented Italian Socialist Party (PSI), which in the past elections had been forecast next to overcome PCI, seemed to stop. Christian Democracy (DC) and the other traditional government parties, with the exception of the Italian Republican Party (PRI) and the Italian Liberal Party (PLI), also experienced a slight decrease in their vote.

The centre-right coalition (Italian: coalizione di centro-destra) is a political alliance of political parties in Italy active under several forms and names since 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi entered politics and formed the Forza Italia party. It has mostly competed with the centre-left coalition. It is composed of right-leaning parties in the Italian political arena, which generally advocate tax reduction and oppose immigration, and in some cases are eurosceptic. The centre-right coalition has ruled the country for more than twelve years between 1994 and today.

In the 1994 Italian general election, under the leadership of Berlusconi, the centre-right ran with two coalitions, the Pole of Freedoms in Northern Italy and Tuscany (mainly Forza Italia and the Northern League), and the Pole of Good Government (mainly Forza Italia and National Alliance) in Central Italy and Southern Italy. In the 1996 Italian general election, after the Northern League had left in late 1994, the centre-right coalition took the name of Pole for Freedoms. The Northern League returned in 2000, and the coalition was re-formed as the House of Freedoms; this lasted until 2008.

The first Conte government was the 65th government of the Italian Republic. It was led by Giuseppe Conte, an independent, and it was in office from 1 June 2018 to 5 September 2019.

The cabinet was formed by a coalition between the Five Star Movement and the League, but it also contained some independents proposed by each party (including the Prime Minister). It was referred to as the "government of change" (Italian: governo del cambiamento) after the title of the political agreement signed by the two parties, or the "yellow-green government" (governo gialloverde), based on their customary colours, even if the League originally preferred "yellow-blue government" (governo gialloblu), due to its new campaign colour under Salvini's leadership.

Lega (English: League), officially named Lega per Salvini Premier (English: League for Salvini Premier, LSP or LpSP), is a right-wing populist political party in Italy, led by Matteo Salvini. The LSP is the informal successor of Lega Nord (English: Northern League, LN).

The LSP was established in December 2017 as the sister party of the LN, active in northern Italy, and as the replacement of Us with Salvini (NcS), LN's previous affiliate in central and southern Italy. The new party aimed at offering LN's values and policies to the rest of the country. Some political commentators described the LSP as a parallel party of the LN, with the aim of politically replacing it, also because of its statutory debt of €49 million. Indeed, since January 2020, the LN has become mostly inactive and has been practically supplanted by the LSP, which is active all around Italy. The LSP came third in the 2018 general election and first in the 2019 European Parliament election. Like the LN, the LSP is a confederation of regional parties, of which the largest and long-running are Liga Veneta and Lega Lombarda, established in 1980 and 1984, respectively. Despite misgivings within the party's Padanian nationalist faction, the political base of the LSP is in northern Italy, where the party gets most of its support and where it has maintained the traditional autonomist outlook of the LN, especially in Veneto and Lombardy.

The 2019 Italian government crisis was a political event in Italy that occurred between August and September 2019. It includes the events that follow the announcement of the Minister of the Interior and leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, that he would revoke League's support of the cabinet and ask the President of the Republic to call a snap election. This provoked the resignation of Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, and resulted in the formation of a new cabinet led by Conte himself.

Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF; French: Europe des nations et des libertés, ENL) was a far-right political group that operated in the European Parliament between 2015 and 2019. It was composed of 37 MEPs and only existed during the European Parliament's 8th term. Most of its MPs were members of the Movement for a Europe of Nations and Freedom political party.

Ideologically, ENF was right-wing populist and Eurosceptic. Its members included far-right parties such as French National Front (known as National Rally after 2018), Italian Lega Nord, Dutch Party for Freedom, and Vlaams Belang. After the 2019 European Parliament election, ENF was transformed into the Identity and Democracy group.

Forza Italia (FI; lit. 'Forward Italy') is a centre-right political party in Italy, whose ideology includes elements of liberal conservatism, Christian democracy, liberalism and populism. FI is a member of the European People's Party. Silvio Berlusconi (former Prime Minister of Italy, 1994–1995, 2001–2006, and 2008–2011) was the party's leader and president until his death in 2023. The party has since been led by Antonio Tajani (former President of the European Parliament, 2017–2019), who had been vice president and coordinator and now functions as secretary. Other leading members include Elisabetta Casellati (former President of the Senate, 2018–2022).

The party branched out of the People of Freedom (PdL) in 2013, and is a revival of the original Forza Italia (FI), founded in 1994 and disbanded in 2009, when it was merged with National Alliance (AN) and several minor parties to form the PdL. FI is a smaller party than the early PdL, which suffered three significant splits: Future and Freedom in 2010, Brothers of Italy in 2012, and the New Centre-Right in 2013. In the 2018 general election FI was overtaken by the League as the largest party of the centre-right coalition, and in the 2022 general election it became the third largest in the coalition, as Brothers of Italy (FdI) became the new dominant party of the coalition.