Italian PM faces severe challenges

Centre-left leader Matteo Renzi, expected to form Italy’s next government this week, must overhaul one of the eurozone’s most troubled economies without an electoral mandate and while awkwardly sharing power with a centre-right rival.

Enrico Letta resigned as prime minister on Friday after his Democratic Party (PD) forced him to make way for Renzi, 39, who is promising radical reforms to the eurozone’s third-biggest economy and a government than can survive until 2018.

President Giorgio Napolitano is likely to ask the slick-talking mayor of Florence, who became PD leader just two months ago and would be Italy’s youngest prime minister, to form a government today, a PD source told Reuters.