Giorgia Meloni has taken the first steps to the head of the Italian government in a hurry.

On Friday afternoon, she came to President Sergio Mattarella in the Quirinal Palace with the complete cabinet list in hand and immediately accepted the task of forming a government “without reservation”.

Usually the intermediate step of the conditional acceptance of the government mandate is part of the dramaturgy of the formation of the government in Rome.

A few days then pass before the final government team is presented and sworn in.

During this “retarding moment”, the president can reject individual proposals for government posts, because according to the constitution, the head of state confirms each individual cabinet member.

Matthias Rub

Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta based in Rome.

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Not so on this historic weekend, when for the first time a woman held the highest office in Italy.

After the conversation with Mattarella on Friday afternoon, Meloni said: "We are ready." And the 81-year-old President expressly supported the 45-year-old politician in her haste.

Mattarella praised the consultations between the leaders of the right-wing party, the Italian Brothers, which won the new elections on September 25, and their allies – Matteo Salvini’s right-wing nationalist League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Christian Democratic Forza Italia – to have taken less than a month.

The rapid formation of a government was "possible because of the clear election result - and it was also appropriate in view of the difficult conditions at home and at international level".

The ceremonial swearing-in ceremony for the centre-right government led by Meloni then took place on Saturday morning, just 16 hours after the government's mandate was given, in late summer sunshine.

Meloni, clearly moved, was the first to take the oath of office before President Mattarella.

She didn't have to read the oath from the sheet of paper in front of her, she spoke the oath by heart.

The other 24 cabinet members followed.

Only six ministers

There are only six women ministers among them, which is a smaller proportion of women than in the previous cabinets, all of which were of course headed by a man.

23 ministers worked for the outgoing government under former ECB boss Mario Draghi, who was sadly dismissed by his European counterparts at the EU summit in Brussels on Friday.

The average age of the Meloni government is 60 years.

The youngest member of the cabinet is the head of government herself, the senior member of the cabinet is Maria Elisabetta Casellati of Forza Italia at 76, formerly President of the Senate and now Minister for Institutional Reforms.

Nine posts in the new cabinet will be held by politicians from the Brothers of Italy, while the Lega and Forza Italia each have five departments.

This means that the smaller coalition partners are significantly over-represented in the cabinet compared to the share of votes they won in September's elections: The Italian Brothers had 26 percent, the Lega had just under nine and Forza Italia a good eight percent.

Lega boss Matteo Salvini, who will take over the transport and infrastructure department, and Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, deputy party leader of Berlusconi's Forza Italia, are also deputy prime ministers.

Five ministries, including key departments such as the interior, health and labor ministries, are run by non-party experts.

The formal handover of office from the Draghi cabinet to the Meloni government will take place on Sunday morning in the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italian prime ministers.

Draghi hands over the bell with which the head of government rings the cabinet meetings to his successor.

The confidence votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which are scheduled for Tuesday, are considered a formality.

The center-right coalition has a majority of 58 percent in both chambers of parliament.

No one in Rome believes that dissenters from the coalition factions will miss out on a lesson to be learned so early in the government's legislative period by voting differently.

Meloni vowed on Twitter that her "high-profile executive branch" would "get to work quickly to respond to the pressing issues facing the nation and its citizens."

Deputy Prime Minister Salvini congratulated himself and his new boss on social media with a joint photo and the caption: "Five years together to change Italy." This is an extremely optimistic forecast for the life expectancy of the 68th government since the Second World War .

Usually, governments in Rome last around a year and a half on average.

Prime Minister Draghi and his team have been in office for 20 months.