Mr Draghi could speak to parliament next week, most likely Wednesday, said Italian TV.

If the impasse cannot be broken, the president has the option of appointing a caretaker leader or dissolving parliament and calling an election as early as September or October.

By early 2023, an election was already scheduled.

Mr. Draghi had earlier won a confidence vote in parliament, but decided to resign after the 5-Star party boycotted the bill, which was intended to help Italians cope with rising energy costs.

“I will tender my resignation to the president of the republic this evening,” Draghi said during a cabinet meeting, according to his office.

“The national unity coalition that supported this government is no longer in place.”

The populist 5-Star party won the most votes in the 2018 election, but its popularity has dwindled, and it has complained that its interests are being ignored.

Mr. Draghi, 74, is the sixth Prime Minister of Italy in the last decade.

Since taking office in February, he has worked to keep the country on track with reforms mandated as part of the EU’s €200 billion coronavirus recovery package.

According to Giovanni Orsina, director of the school of government at Rome’s LUISS university, the president will almost certainly do everything in his power to persuade Mr Draghi to find a solution.

“We’ve got the pandemic, we got the war, we have inflation, we have the energy crisis,” she said.

“So certainly this is not a good moment. And also because [President] Mattarella believes, rightly, that his mission is to safeguard stability.”

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