As the dust settles after Sunday's election, Italy's President Sergio Mattarella still needs to consider who will be Prime Minister.
ADVERTISEMENT
Italy seems in limbo right now, but in three weeks (March 23) its newly elected lawmakers will take office and nominate the speakers of the lower house and Senate.
After Easter, President Sergio Mattarella will begin consultations to decide who will be Prime Minister.
"History and the constitution give us two options. The hardest one would be if president Mattarella decides it's not possible to form a government and dissolves parliament," says constitutional law professor Giovanni Guzzetta, from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
"This has never happened in the past - there's never been a situation where an election has been immediately followed by another," he added.
"An alternative for the president is to appoint an institutional figure as president of the senate. One that plays the role of facilitator and receives a mandate not because he will be the prime minister, but because, with more freedom than the president he can consult the political forces and build a majority."
Yet it'll be tricky to form an alliance between political forces that have been fighting hard.
"The president is in the most difficult moment of his mandate and there are great expectations for the decisions he'll take - in Italy and beyond," says Euronews reporter Gioia Salvatori.