After Marini acknowledged an interim government could not be formed due to the lack of a clear majority in the Italian Parliament willing to support it, a snap election was scheduled for 13–14 April 2008.

By the time the crisis started, Prodi had been in office for twenty months, after his centre-left coalition had won a majority of seats in Parliament in the 2006 Italian general election.

One of the parties belonging to the coalition was the Union of Democrats for Europe (UDEUR), led by Clemente Mastella, who Prodi had chosen as his Minister of Justice.

[2] On 16 January 2008, following media reports about an extensive corruption investigation involving him and his wife, who was also a member of UDEUR, Mastella resigned from the office of minister.

[11][2] On 30 January 2008, Napolitano asked Franco Marini to attempt to form a caretaker government, with the goal of avoiding a snap election until a new electoral system could have been in place.