The Italian paper La Verita, which was instrumental in publishing details about the major racketeering scandal in Macedonia, reports that Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is siding with the Zaev Government in Macedonia and is attempting to continue promoting the policies of outgoing EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. Mogherini was one of the main proponents of Zaev’s power grab and of pushing through the Prespa treaty and the forced renaming of Macedonia, and now Conte is trying to revive the idea of EU enlargement toward the Balkans as a reward for Zaev, even after it was blocked by French President Emmanuel Macron.

Zaev is due for an official visit to Conte on Tuesday in an attempt to pursue possible solutions in his favor. The reception of a Prime Minister destined to go down in history as the leader of a country in which the citizens are daily persecuted by the judiciary for political reasons and are imprisoned as terrorists for protesting in the Parliament means that Conte is pursuing the political line left over from Matteo Renzi and Mogherini, LA Verita writes.

La Verita reports that it was the former Prime Minister Renzi who was instrumental in putting together the “soft coup” in Macedonia, giving Zaev illegally wiretapped conversations to bring down the Nikola Gruevski Government. This campaign was supported by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, and by street protests by George Soros funded NGO groups, while the tapes were used by the politically driven prosecutor Katica Janeva, who is now detained owing to revelations made by La Verita.

Zaev has a huge debt to Italy and now that he again has a friendly Government in Rome, he hopes he will get the same level of support here he used to have before. Conte, on the other hand, is re-positioning the country along the lines of the Renzi foreign policy, but is also acting in order to avoid being engulfed in a Spygate scandal himself, La Verita reports, insisting that Conte is now working to give Zaev hope in an attempt to preserve him in office.