Following are bios of ministers without portfolio in Silvio Berlusconi's new government.
KEY:PDL= People of Freedom Party, FI=Forza Italia, AN=Northern Alliance, L=Northern League, DCA=Independent Christian Democrats.
* Reform - UMBERTO BOSSI (L).
Even after a serious stroke in 2004 which left his speech impaired, Bossi, 66, remains the iconic leader of the regionalist Northern League.
A former laboratory assistant and later clerk for the Italian Automobile Club, Bossi plays an anti-Rome, anti-immigrant and power-to-the-people tune that is music to the ears of many in the affluent and hard-working north.
He coined the phrase 'Roma Ladrona' (Thieving Rome) to criticise the concentration of power in the capital.
After a 1994 campaign in which he called his nominal ally BelusKaiser and worse, he brought the League into a winning alliance - only to bring the government down seven months later.
Out of power, Bossi moved his party to even more extreme positions, opening an unofficial 'northern parliament' and playing media stunts such as a mystical journey along the Po in search of northern Italy's 'Celtic roots'.
Bossi led his party back into Berlusconi's House of Liberties coalition for the 2001 elections. When the alliance won, he was made minister for devolution and reform.
He spent much of the 2001-2006 legislature pushing reluctant allies to approve a controversial constitutional reform package including the devolution of many powers to the regions.
The reforms were rejected by a referendum last year and the League made devolution a condition for remaining Berlusconi's ally this time around.
Formerly a trumpeter in an amateur band he founded, Bossi is married to a Sicilian and has four children, one from his first wife.
* Civil Service - RENATO BRUNETTA (PDL-FI).
The son of a travelling salesman, Brunetta, 57, is a professor of economics at Rome's Tor Vergata University and has collaborated as an economic advisor during the last three decades in the administrations of Bettino Craxi, Giuliano Amato, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and Berlusconi.
Elected an MEP in 1999, Brunetta is also founder of Labour magazine and often participates on television talk shows as an economics expert.
According to Italian daily La Stampa, he is the only minister in the new administration shorter than Berlusconi.
* Relations with Parliament - ELIO VITO (PDL-FI).
Vito, 47, has a degree in sociology and first became an MP in 1992 with the Radical Party before switching allegiance to Forza Italia.
He has been Forza Italia's House whip since 2001.
In his early career in Naples he was dubbed 'the moray eel' because of his reputation for being small but tenacious.
* Simplification - ROBERTO CALDEROLI (L).
A graduate in medicine and dental surgery, Calderoli, 51, became an MP in 1992 and was elected to the Senate in 2001, where he served as deputy speaker.
He took over from Umberto Bossi as minister for reform in Berlusconi's last administration where he sparked controversy by promoting chemical castration for rapists and putting a bounty on the heads of the men responsible for the murder of a petrol station attendant.
He also helped author Italy's new electoral law, blamed by parties for creating instability and once famously dismissed by Calderoli himself as ''crap''.
Calderoli was forced to resign in 2006 after sporting a T-shirt on TV with one of the notorious Danish cartoons that lampooned the Prophet Mohammed, sparking a Libyan riot in which 11 people died.
Calderoli upset Muslims again last September when he suggested pigs should be brought in to thwart plans for the construction of a major mosque in Bologna.
Calderoli's new appointment comes despite calls for his exclusion from the government from a Libyan charity.
Calderoli, separated from the wife he married in a Celtic ritual, has also upset animal rights campaigners in the past by keeping wolves in his house as pets.
* Regional Affairs - RAFFAELE FITTO (PDL/FI).
A law graduate, Fitto, 38, entered politics in the mid-90s and followed in his late father's footsteps as regional president of Puglia in 2000 - at the age of 30 the youngest ever.
Fitto has also worked as an MEP and entered the House in 2005, where he served on the Constitutional Affairs and Regional Affairs Committees.
In 2006 Berlusconi named him Forza Italia's national representative for southern Italy.
Fitto has an ''unexhausted and unexhaustible'' passion for football, enjoys reading and has an extensive collection of toy soldiers.
* European Union Affairs - ANDREA RONCHI (PDL-AN).
Journalist Ronchi, 53, first became an MP in 2001 and has been spokesman for the National Alliance since 2005.
A close personal friend of AN leader Gianfranco Fini, he organised then deputy premier Fini's historic trip to Israel in 2003, seen as a definitive renunciation of the party's neo-fascist roots.
* Equal Opportunities - MARA CARFAGNA (PDL-FI).
An ex-showgirl who won sixth place in the 1997 Miss Italia contest, 32-year-old Carfagna has a law degree and began her political career in 2004 as a coordinator for the Forza Italia women's movement in Campania.
Berlusconi made her an MP in 2006 and says she is beautiful ''inside and outside''.
Carfagna has campaigned for the establishment of women's refuges and the introduction of a law giving financial and psychological support to pregnant women in difficulty who choose not to have abortions.
Her hobbies include dancing and playing the piano.
* Government Programme - GIANFRANCO ROTONDI (PDL-DCA).
Journalist Rotondi, 37, is the leader of the Independent Christian Democrats, which he founded in 2005.
After becoming an MP in 1994 with the Catholic People's Party, he subsequently allied himself with Berlusconi's House of Liberties coalition and the centrist, Catholic UDC.
Rotondi split from the UDC in 2005 in order to revive the tradition of Italy's once-powerful Christian Democrat party, which was swept away by corruption scandals in the early 1990s.
He was elected to the Senate in 2006, where he served on the watchdog commission for state broadcaster RAI.
* Youth Policy - GIORGIA MELONI (PDL-AN).
At 31, Meloni is the youngest minister in the history of the Republic.
Trained as a journalist, Meloni was elected to Rome's provincial government in 1998 and entered the House in 2006, where she served as its youngest ever deputy speaker.
She has headed the National Alliance's branch for young members, Youth Action, since 2004.
Her hobbies include early morning jogs along the Tiber.
*Cabinet Secretary - GIANNI LETTA.
Berlusconi's long-standing business and political aide, 73-year-old Letta began his career as a journalist before joining Berlusconi's family holding company Fininvest in May 1987.
He oversaw the group's publishing and broadcasting activities and became a close friend of Berlusconi.
At the end of April Berlusconi described Letta as ''the only indispensable person'' for the new government, adding that he is ''a gift from God to all Italians''.
