Ahead of the March 4 general election, Italy’s 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di Maio said his party is open to external candidates, as well as those chosen by its online candidacy process.
Speaking on the talk show Porta a Porta, he explained that opening the party to external candidates “means giving opportunities to people who work in schools, associations, to businesspeople, to take part in our process”.
As reported by the Italian news agency ANSA, Di Maio also said that while other parties were picking candidates from inside their ranks, his party is “doing a public selection and we are identifying the best minds”.
Di Maio said that the external candidates, too, would have to go through the so-called “parlamentarie” online selection process.
According to ANSA, Di Maio added that “I don’t think that it’s any longer the [right] time for Italy to leave the euro”. He told Porta a Porta host Bruno Vespa that “there will be more room” for Italy now that “the French-German axis is no longer as strong as before”.
Meanwhile, M5S, which has long taken a eurosceptic stance, said it would like a referendum on staying in the eurozone.
