Deputy tasked with forging coalition to end deadlock in Italy

Mr Letta, a 46-year-old centre-left lawmaker and number two Democratic Party leader, said he accepted the job knowing it’s an enormous responsibility and that Italy’s political class “has lost all credibility”.

President Giorgio Napolitano charged Mr Letta with putting together a coalition of the Democratic Party and the centre-right party of Silvio Berlusconi, the two biggest blocks in Parliament, and said he had received assurances that both would support Mr Letta.

“It is the only possible solution,” Mr Napolitano said, calling Mr Letta the figure who could rally “a broad convergence of the political forces that can assure a majority in both houses to the government”.

Mr Letta will begin consultations on forming a cabinet that can win cross-party support and a vote of confidence in Parliament.

Mr Letta’s improbable candidacy came after the chief of his Democratic Party, Pier Luigi Bersani, resigned after failing to form a government following inconclusive February elections and then failing to unite the party behind a candidate for president.

Mr Bersani had refused to deal with Mr Berlusconi, preventing the possibility of a coalition.

Mr Letta is a moderate figure along the lines of Mr Bersani, to whom he has been a loyal deputy since 2009, backing him in autumn’s leadership contest against Florence mayor Matteo Renzi.

But he has one trump card: his uncle Gianni Letta is a close aide to Mr Berlusconi, a relationship that could prove a key to shoring up a grand coalition among very uneasy partners.

The third-largest vote-getter in the February elections, the anti-establishment Five-Star Movement, has vowed to be in opposition to any government.

Mr Letta said his top priority was to address the “enormous, unbearable” emergency in the eurozone’s third-largest economy. Italy has been in recession for over a year and unemployment is at 11.6 per cent with youth unemployment at 37.8 per cent.

“It is a very difficult situation, fragile, unprecedented,” Mr Letta said. He promised as a second priority to enact political reforms, including a cut in the number of parliamentarians and a reform of the electoral law. Inconclusive February 24-25 elections left the Democrats and their allies in control of the lower Chamber of Deputies but not the Senate.

In 1998, Mr Letta became at 32 Italy’s youngest government minister.