ROME - Monday and Tuesday will see votes of confidence for Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, in the Chamber of Deputies and Senate respectively, as he continues his fight to regain his majority. Matteo Renzi, leader of Italia Viva (IV), has withdrawn the support of his party from Conte’s coalition government - though only 18 MPs in the Senate (30 in the Chamber of Deputies), this costs Conte his majority. He has also withdrawn two ministers from Conte’s cabinet. However, some of Renzi’s IV MPs do not support his move away from the government and may vote in favour of the coalition on Monday, taking some of Renzi’s very limited power away from him, but possibly leaving themselves without a party. Much debate between Renzi and Conte and the coalition parties has been taking place in the run up to the vote on Monday, and Renzi has indicated he may in fact return the support of his party to the side of the coalition on certain conditions. The two primary parties of Conte’s coalition, the 5 Star Movement (M5S) and the Democratic Party, have criticised Renzi’s dramatic move, calling it “irresponsibe”. In depriving the coalition of a majority, he has caused a great amount of instability for the government in an already difficult time—Italy’s Covid-19 situation is as bad as it’s ever been and the country is facing its worst recession since the second World War. In order to keep the coalition government in power, Conte will have to fight for the votes of MPs who had previously deserted M5S, MPs in Italia Viva who might still have some loyalty towards Conte, and some wavering independent MPs. However, the crucial vote may be the following day in the Senate where additional support for Conte might be harder to find. If Conte were to lose his majority following the two votes of confidence, he would be forced to resign and President Mattarella would have to either consult the parties and find some other coalition or dissolve parliament and call an election. The Deputy Secretary of the Democratic Party, Andrea Orlando, has said in regards to the ever changing loyalties in the Chamber and the Senate, “the litmus test will take place with the move into the Chambers, we have signals being given by many parliamentarians and we will see if this allows us to maintain our majority in government. We will see, there are always some psychological tactics.” Orlando added that trying to restore a coalition government with IV is wishful thinking, and that "it's not going to take five minutes to patch things up." M5S, the moderate Eurosceptics, have pledged to continue to support Conte on the condition that he doesn’t take money from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). Renzi has said that “irresponsible isn’t someone who renounces two ministers, but somebody that, with 80,000 deaths of Covid-19, doesn’t take the money from the ESM.”   ol