Another Europe National Committee member Andrea Pisauro on the lessons of the recent constitutional referendum in Italy
In March, Italians in Italy and abroad voted for a constitutional referendum on the judiciary on a flagship reform of the Giorgia Meloni’s government.
The reform (you can read more about it on the LSE blog) was to an extent technical and procedural but on another level a politically significant piece of a wide program to increase the power of the executive and reduce that of the judiciary and legislative.
It was not the product of a compromise but an imposition of the government, which passed without the opposition support and indeed without Parliament amending a single comma, against any meaningful constitutional spirit.
Because of a number of scandals and serious miscarriages of justice the last few years, judges are not very popular in Italy and pundits were expecting the reform to pass. Yet it was defeated 53-47 in the popular vote.
Two main factors drove the vote against the government.
1) Voters realised that the attack on judges was political, part of that wider plan to silence the judiciary. It recapitulated Meloni’s belonging to Trump’s camp and the international far right. The vote therefore became to an extent a judgement on Meloni’s relationship with Trump, and people judged her holistically, from her support to Israel’s genocide and silence on the illegal aggression on Iran to her campaigning against judges exactly like Trump and Netanyahu and other far right leaders, echoing the Berlusconi of a few years before
2) The vote signals a national awakening in general and an awakening of the Left in particular as most opposition parties, most notably the Partito Democratico (PD/S&D) led by Elly Schlein, campaigned for a NO vote touring the country and mobilising citizens. The results were significant: NO gained 15 million votes, 2 more than all the opposition parties combined in the last general election, back in 2022 when Meloni postfascist party won power.
The lessons for progressives across Europe are clear: “first they come for the judges” is trick n.1 in the authoritarian playbook. The Labour government appalling decision to appeal against the court’s suspension of the proscription of Palestine Action is probably a smaller scale act of a similar playbook. Importantly, this vote is a good reminder that constitutions must not be changed unilaterally, and leaders who are close to Trump, will be heavily punished by voters.
Interestingly, class was a significant predictor of the vote with the NO backed by the working class, with most young people, precariats and poor workers and the South voting NO, against the city centres, upper middle class and wealthy North mostly siding with YES/SI.
The next general elections in Italy are scheduled for next year and talks are ongoing to build a progressive coalition between PD, Five Stars Movement and other progressive parties to oust Giorgia Meloni then. We can’t but hope they will succeed and that a Schlein government might emerge soon. An antifascist Europe needs an antifascist Italy!