Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani was elected leader of the Forza Italia party on Saturday, a conservative formation founded 29 years ago by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Reuters and Agerpres news agencies reported.

Antonio Tajani, 69, was elected unanimously. He will have to revive the party, which had been in decline for several years before Berlusconi’s death.

The career of the current head of Italian diplomacy took place mainly outside the country: he was a European Commissioner and President of the European Parliament. He entered politics in the 1980s in the small monarchist movement, then in Forza Italia in 1994, when he was Berlusconi’s press secretary during his first term as prime minister.

Reuters estimates that Tajani lacks the charisma of his predecessor, who died last month, and is not among Italy’s most popular politicians.

“I am receiving an almost impossible inheritance,” he said at a meeting of the party’s national and European representatives. “It’s not easy to lead a political movement that Silvio Berlusconi has led for almost 30 years,” he added on stage with a giant photo of the media mogul in the background.

Forza Italia is a partner in the right-wing government coalition led by Prime Minister Giorgia Maloney, where her Fratelli d’Italia party and Matteo Salvini’s League have larger stakes. Recent opinion polls give Forza Italia just 7% of voters, compared to 30% and 10% respectively for the other two political formations.

“We want to be a centre-right centre,” Tajani declared. “We are different from our allies and have no intention of giving up our identity.”