Silvio Berlusconi took the reins of power in Italy for the third time yesterday at a swearing-in ceremony before President Napolitano in the Quirinal Palace. The new “slimmed down” Government faces confidence votes in the Lower House of parliament on Wednesday and in the Senate the following day. It is certain to be confirmed in office since it enjoys a commanding majority in both Houses.

The new Government, one of the most right-wing in Italy since the Second World War, contains four women ministers, including a former television showgirl.

Mr Berlusconi, who has vowed to hold his first Cabinet meeting in Naples to tackle the city’s rubbish crisis, was accused by critics of using his last period in office, from 2001-06, to protect his own interests instead of reviving the Italian economy.

Yesterday he said that, given the Government’s majority: “We have no excuses this time. The conditions are all there to put Italy back on its feet, and if we fail the fault will be ours alone.”

Mr Berlusconi, 71, gave senior posts to some of his most longstanding allies. There are also 13 new faces in the list of 21 ministers, reduced from 26 in the outgoing centre-left Government. Two of the four women ministers — Stefania Prestigiacomo, 41, (Environment) and Maria Stella Gelmini, 34 (Education), from the Forza Italia party of Mr Berlusconi — have Cabinet rank. Mara Carfagna, 32, (Equal Opportunities) of Forza Italia and Giorgia Meloni, 31, (Youth) of the farright Alleanza Nazionale are among nine ministers outside the Cabinet.

Ms Carfagna, a former television presenter, hit the headlines last year when Mr Berlusconi remarked during an awards dinner that he would “marry her like a shot” if he were not already married. He later apologised publicly to his wife Veronica Lario.

La Repubblica said that the new Government reflected “King Silvio’s” continued dominance of the Italian political scene 14 years after he entered politics. Giulio Tremonti, 60, returns as Economy Minister and Franco Frattini, 51, leaves his post as the Italian European Commissioner to return as Foreign Minister. He will be replaced in Brussels by Antonio Tajani. The Justice portfolio goes to Angelino Alfano, 37, a Sicilian lawyer and Roberto Maroni, 53, deputy leader of the anti-immigrant Northern League, becomes Interior Minister, overseeing the promised crackdown on street crime and illegal immigration.

The Defence Ministry goes to Ignazio La Russa, 61, of Alleanza Nazionale.

The outspoken Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, who brought down Mr Berlusconi’s first Government in 1994, has been given the portfolio of Federalist Reform.

Roberto Calderoli, 52, a Northern League senator who resigned in 2006 after he appeared on television wearing a T-shirt bearing a Danish cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad, is to head a new ministry to simplify Italian laws.

Many analysts say the Right made gains because of concerns about immigration and economic decline.

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