On 20 and 21 September 2020 a confirmatory referendum was held on whether or not to cut the number of Italian MPs. Where did the referendum come from and what were the steps of its approval process? What were the reasons that led to it? Which parties supported the Yes vote and which ones the NO vote? And Why? What happens

1. Theconstitutional
Referendumoncutting
thenumberofMPs
What, how, when and why
September 2020

2. What is it?
On 20 and 21 September 2020 a confirmatory referendum was held on whether or not to cut the number
of Italian MPs, on the text of the constitutional law: ‘Amendments to Arts. 56, 57 and 59 of the Constitution on
reducing the number of members of Parliament’.
The law establishes that the number of MPs will be reduced from 945 to 600: 400 deputies (instead of the
current 630) and 200 elected senators (instead of 315).

3. This is not the first time an attempt has been made to cut
the number of MPs. For example, the Renzi-Boschi reform,
rejected in the referendum of 4 December 2016, would have
reduced the number of senators to 100. Yet this is the first
time since 1963 that a plan to reform the Constitution
reduces the number of MPs without changing the structure,
functions and electoral systems of the two Houses.
Prior attempts
Since 1963, when the number of MPs in the two
Houses was set at 630 for the Chamber of
Deputies and 315 (elected) for the Senate, the
only change in the composition of the Parliament
was introduced by L. 1/2000 creating the
Overseas Constituencies (12 deputies and 6
senators) without changing the number of MPs.

4. The origins of this referendum
The 2018 electoral programme of the Five Star Movement
(5SM) included ‘Cutting waste and costs in politics: 50 bn that
go back to the citizens’.
During subsequent negotiations between the 5SM and the
League, this particular point in their programme transformed into
a concrete objective: to cut the number of MPs.
This point was inserted into the ‘Contract for the Government
of Change’, signed by the 5SM and the League during their
negotiations for the government Conte I.

5. C
The cut in MPs gets to Parliament
The first to talk about ‘cutting the number of MPs’ was
Riccardo Fraccaro, then Minister of Relations with the
Parliament, who on 12 July 2018 during a parliamentary
hearing, put forth the hypothesis of reforming some priority
areas of government through a constitutional law, which
included the number of MPs.

6. C
Constitutional laws and
aggravated approval
The laws revising the Constitution follow an approval process
referred to as ‘aggravated’ approval:
• they are adopted by each house in two consecutive
resolutions at a minimum interval of three months;
• the second resolution must be approved by an absolute
majority.
Laws revising the Constitution may be put to
confirmatory referendum if, within three months of
publication, a request is made by one fifth of the
members of one of the Houses or by 500,000 electors
or by five Regional Councils.

7. The approval process in Parliament
The three constitutional draft
bills begin to be examined and
are later merged into one
single text (A.S. 214).
The Senate Assembly
approves the text in the
initial resolution with 185
votes in favour, 54 against
and 4 abstentions.
The text goes to the Chamber
of Deputies, where it is
approved without amendments
with 310 votes in favour, 107
against and 5 abstentions.
The confirmatory Referendum.
11july2019
The next Senate vote.
8oCTOBER2019
The last vote passed In the
Chamber with a new majority.
20-21sePtembER2020
10july2018
7february2019
19mAY2019

8. New Government
New Majority
On 20 August 2019 the yellow-green government
between the 5SM and the League ends and Prime
Minister Giuseppe Conte hands his mandate over to
the President of the Republic.
After 8 days, a new government is formed – Conte II – with a
new yellow-red majority between the 5SM, the Democratic
Party and the Free and Equal party.
One of the conditions of the M5S upon forming the new
government is to cut the number of MPs.
The Chamber votes in favour of the Constitutional draft bill on
8 October with a crushing majority: 553 in favour, 14 against
and 2 abstentions. A landslide.

9. What led to the Referendum
Less than two days from the expiry of the deadline,
71 senators submit a request for a confirmatory
Referendum to the Court of Cassation on the constitutional Law.
None of the senators of the Brothers of Italy or the Group
for the Autonomies sign the request.
The President of the Republic signs a decree
announcing that the Referendum will be held on
29 March 2020.
23 JANUARY 2020
The Court of Cassation decides that the
referendum question is legitimate.
A referendum will be held, but when?
10 JANUARY 2020
28 JANUARY 2020

10. and the postponing of the
elections: Election Day
Many objected to having a so-called ‘Election Day’.
Specifically: the Referendum Promotional Committee, the
Basilicata Region, Senator Gregorio De Falco (elected with
the 5SM, then switched to the Mixed group), +Europa submitted
four questions of inadmissibility to the Constitutional Court.
In their opinion:
• referenda and elections are different types of voting;
• the electoral campaign of the administrative elections risks
influencing electors’ judgement in the Referendum as well.
On 12 August the Constitutional Court decides that there are
no grounds for the questions submitted: ‘Election Day’ is
confirmed.
Telos A&S describes here how the Covid-19
emergency and the measures to contain the virus
influenced the 2020 round of elections.
What the government decides to do is to hold both
the administrative elections and the Referendum on
the same days.
The explosion of the pandemic

11. They have always been in favour of
reducing MPs and did not back the request
for a confirmatory Referendum.
The parties backing the YES vote
Cutting MPs is a priority. They promised their electors
they would do it and their criticism of representative
democracy has been one of the hallmarks of the 5SM
since the beginning.
Brothers of Italy
5SM

12. Why they back YES
Those in favour of reducing the number of MPs think this should
be done because:
• Italy stands out from the other main European Countries due
to its high number of directly elected MPs. For example, the
German electors directly elect the 709 members of the
Bundestag, 1 for every 116,000 citizens, whereas the Italians
directly elect 945 deputies and senators together, 1 for every
63,000 citizens;
• the fact that there are lots of MPs causes each of the Houses
to work less efficiently and makes the legislative process
longer;
• the reform backers estimate that this would allow the
government’s purse to save 500 million euros per legislature.

13. The parties backing the NO vote and the (important)
undecided parties
The smaller left-wing parties and others without many representatives in Parliament, like +Eur and Action have said NO.
The League’s and the PD’s attitudes are strongly influenced by the fact that both parties, because they have at different times agreed
to a majority contract with the 5SM, voted in favour of the reform, however without unanimous consensus within their parties to
reduce the number of MPs:
Party leader Matteo Salvini is in favour of a
YES vote. However, several other prominent
party members, like Giancarlo Giorgetti and
Claudio Borghi, have said they are against
it in view of the Referendum, even though
they voted in favour of it in Parliament due to
their group’s alignment.
These parties have left it up
to their electors to decide
how to vote, although their
stance is crucial.
They voted against the reform in the first reading,
then approved it in the final vote in the Chamber
of Deputies in order to comply with their agreement
with the 5SM, asking in return to reform the
electoral system to create one based on
proportional representation to balance the
distortions in representation in the Assemblies
generated by the reduced number of elected MPs.

14. Why they back NO: A less
• reducing the minimum number of elected senators in each Region
(except Valle d’Aosta, Molise and Trentino-AltoAdige) from seven to
three, the reform would drastically reduce the number of elected
senators in some small- to medium-sized Regions: around 40% in
Friuli-Venezia Giulia andAbruzzo and even around 60% in Umbria
and Basilicata. This would exacerbate imbalances in representation
between large and small Regions. What is more, the electoral
threshold for the election of senators in these regions would be
remarkably high. But the backers of a YES vote would respond that
the reform, still ongoing, remedies these critical issues because
senators will no longer be elected on a regional basis.
The NO camp believes that cutting MPs may jeopardise
democratic representation and the functioning of
Parliament:
• Since in Italy representation in the Houses is political
(not territorial), both Houses participate equally in the
making of laws and express confidence in the
government. In order to assess how representative the
Parliament is, each house needs to be considered
separately. According to this criteria, the current
representation quotients (1 deputy every 96,000 citizens
and 1 senator every 192,000 citizens) are not so
different from those of the other countries. However, the
(rather modest) quotients resulting from the reform would
be (1 deputy every 151,000 citizens and 1 senator
every 302,000 citizens).
representativeParliament…

15. a more efficient one
A smaller Chamber of Deputies and, especially, a smaller
Senate would not be more efficient. Quite the opposite,
the groups in parliament may no longer be able to cover
all the Standing Committees, meaning that each MP
would have to serve on more than one Committee.
What is more, in the Senate, where recent amendments to
its regulations have generalised the process giving the
Committees a legislative capacity, Committees made up of
a very small number of senators would find themselves
having to approve bills that would not even be examined
by the Assembly.
A more streamlined legislative process is obtained by
moving beyond the s.c. ‘perfect bicameralism’ or by
reforming the regulations of the two Houses, not by
reducing the number of MPs.
Simply cutting MPs would have no effect on the quality
and competence of the elected members. The quality of a
political class is determined by how that class is selected,
not by the number of MPs.
There would be less savings because the administrative
apparatus of the two Houses would remain.
... isn’t necessarily

16. What do the Italians think?
The latest polls
In the last 2 weeks before the referendum, publishing polls
is prohibited. Over the last few months:
• the percentage of people interviewed who knew about the
referendum increased from a measly 35% in July to a more
appealing 81% in the last survey (4 September);
• there was a slight change in the yes/no ratio from a
crushing 85% to 15% in July to a more balanced yet
eloquent 70% to 30% on 4 September;
• estimated turnout is around 50%. However, there is no
quorum for this referendum, so the results will be valid
even if turnout is less than 50%;
• an appeal to vote NO, initially backed by 183 constitution
experts and published on 24 August 2020 in the Huffington
Post, got over 500 signatures from among jurists and
other academics and backers.

17. has reason to celebrate
Surprisingly, the polls were right: YES won with 69.5%
whereas NO stopped at 30.5%.
Turnout was 53.4%, which is remarkable seeing as there
was no quorum requirement.
Despite this defeat, the political parties siding with the NO
vote saw the result as a triumph because they succeeded in
bumping up the percentage of NO backers from 15% to
30% in just a few weeks, for example:
• Action party leader Carlo Calenda stated
I believe that this referendum will create a lot more
rifts than we see today and that there is a pursuit of
representation and it is very strong.
• on Twitter the +Europa party claimed that
In just two weeks of campaigning, the NO vote recovered in
all the polls: a non-negligible portion of Italy didn’t take the
bait of populism, of the anti-politics and anti-parliament
frenzy. We’re proud of the results.
YES wins, but the NO camp also

18. Despite the YES victory, the cut in MPs won’t happen overnight.
We won’t see the new Parliament of 600 MPs until the next legislature.
In the meantime, the majority backing the current Government has presented two
important reforms to offset the negative effects of cutting MPs on democratic
representation:
• changing to a proportional electoral system, which has aroused criticism within
the majority itself (especially from Italia Viva);
• a new constitutional reform abolishing the election of senators in constituencies
geographically based on regions and reducing the number of Regional delegates
for the election of the President of the Republic.
The two reforms are being examined by the Parliament.
What happens now?

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