High-flying Meloni bets big on a referendum

ROME — Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is taking a big gamble by holding a referendum on judicial reform next month that could puncture her aura of invincibility. 

For now, Meloni looks like an unstoppable force in Rome and Brussels, leading the most stable government Italy has seen in years.

That makes the March 22-23 referendum a high-stakes maneuver. A win would cement her grip on power, and reinforce her image as politically invulnerable, but the vote could equally backfire.

Referendums in Italy can easily morph into votes of confidence in the government, and Meloni will be acutely aware that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had to step down after a failed referendum on constitutional reform in 2016.

By seeking to overhaul the justice system, Meloni is venturing into one of Italy’s most combustible arenas, laying herself open to accusations that she is interfering in a fiercely independent judiciary, which right-wingers have often attacked for leftist bias.

It’s a bitter debate with a long political heritage. Italy’s right is still smarting over landmark corruption cases that purged the Christian Democrat establishment in the 1990s and the ghost of Silvio Berlusconi, the former playboy prime minister and billionaire media tycoon who died in 2023, looms large over the vote. He complained that the 35 criminal cases against him were motivated by left-wing judges and magistrates, whom he slammed as a “cancer of democracy.”

For decades, however, most governments have been wary of major restructuring of the legal system. But Meloni is now ready to move.

Her supporters say the reforms proposed in March’s referendum will modernize a judicial system that is often criticized as slow, politicized and unaccountable, bringing it more closely into step with other European models.

In practice, the changes sought are very technical. They address how judges and prosecutors are governed, hired and disciplined, separating their career paths and restructuring judicial oversight bodies.

By elevating those questions into a flagship cause and taking them to the ballot box, Meloni has transformed this technical shake-up into a direct test of her authority.

Modernization or revenge?

For Vice Justice Minister Francesco Paolo Sisto, the reform is long overdue. Disconnecting judges from prosecutors, he argued, would strengthen fairness and public trust in the courts.

“A defendant who enters the courtroom knowing that his judge has no ties to the prosecutor will be reassured,” Sisto told POLITICO. “I’ve never seen a referee from the same city as one of the teams.”

For Vice Justice Minister Francesco Paolo Sisto, the reform is long overdue. | Vincenzo Nuzzolese/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Critics, however, see something more insidious. They reckon the reform looks less like a neutral push for modernization, and more like an attempt to weaken judicial independence and increase political control over prosecutors.

That perception is reinforced by the government’s increasingly confrontational rhetoric toward the courts.

Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has accused parts of the judiciary of acting as political “opposition” to the government, while Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who has repeatedly faced prosecution over his hard-line migration policies, routinely casts judges as politically motivated and disconnected from public sentiment.

Meloni herself has often framed judicial rulings as obstacles to her agenda. At a January press conference, she blamed court decisions for undermining her attempts to pass tougher law-and-order measures, asking: “How can one defend the security of Italians if every initiative meant to do so is systematically annulled by some judges?”

To her opponents, that is exactly the sort of language that fuels the impression the reform is more about trying to assert dominance in a decades-long power struggle rather than striving for courtroom efficiency.

Tension between Italy’s judicial and political classes dates back to the Mani Pulite (Clean Hands) prosecutions of the early 1990s, when prosecutors exposed a vast corruption network that wiped out an entire generation of politicians. On the right, that purge hardened into a lasting grievance: The belief that the judiciary is an unelected political actor, with unwarranted moral high standing.

That was only compounded by the seemingly endless legal sagas around Berlusconi.

Former prosecutor Piercamillo Davigo, who was part of the Mani Pulite team, has no doubt the reform was a political attempt to tame the judiciary. “It’s an attempt to control the judiciary as in Italy they are strong and really independent, not ruled by politicians,” he told POLITICO. “This reform will be damaging to independence and weaken [the] power of courts, giving government more power as government controls the disciplinary court.”

Davigo rejected the government’s claim that judges obstructed policy for political ends, arguing that courts were instead enforcing legal constraints, including European law, on government initiatives such as plans to send migrants to processing centers in Albania.

Opposition leaders echo that critique. Giuseppe Conte, leader of the populist 5Star Movement, said the reform did little to address chronic delays in the justice system and instead formed part of a broader institutional power grab.

“The real goal is to divide and rule,” Conte told POLITICO, accusing the government of seeking a justice system “that no longer disturbs those in command.”

Invincible or vulnerable?

The risk for Meloni is not legal or procedural, but political. Justice reform pits Meloni against a vocal and well-organized constituency with deep roots in the state. Similar proposals floated during Berlusconi’s first government in the mid-1990s triggered protests and contributed to the collapse of his coalition. Successors drew a lesson: avoid the fight.

Similar proposals floated during Silvio Berlusconi’s first government in the mid-1990s triggered protests and contributed to the collapse of his coalition. | Giorgio Cosulich/Getty Images

Meloni’s decision, unforced by Brussels, market pressure or crisis, can be partly explained by her personal trajectory. She entered politics during the upheaval of the 1990s, and carries no personal baggage from that era. She is operating from a position of strength, leading a stable government and canvassing well.

Polls suggest the gamble is finely balanced. Recent surveys show opponents of the reform slightly ahead, though awareness of details remains low. A recent poll by YouTrend forecast a win for opponents of the reform if turnout is low, with 51 percent voting against, whereas with higher turnout, the supporters of the reform would win, by a margin of 52.6 percent to 47.4 percent. A poll by SWG found 38 percent of the electorate supported the reform versus 37 percent against, with 25 percent undecided.

Lorenzo Pregliasco, of the YouTrend polling agency, described the vote as an “unprecedented challenge” for Meloni. Mobilizing opposition, he noted, was often easier than building support for a complex reform, and center-left voters have historically been more reliable in turning out for referendums.

Meloni could attempt to politicize the vote, turning it into a plebiscite on her leadership. But that strategy carries risks of its own. She has instead sought to distance herself from the outcome, stressing that she would not resign in the event of defeat.

Even so, she will have to take ownership of the result. “If you’re the prime minister and you put a reform to a referendum, it’s inevitably also a vote on your government,” Pregliasco said.

If she wins, the government could build on that momentum, and even attempt to force early elections, according to political analysts and polling experts such as Pregliasco. Meloni said in January that early elections “are not on her radar.”

But equally the opposition could be revived by a defeat of the proposed reform, opening up the field in elections scheduled for 2027. If Meloni loses, she would no longer be seen as “invincible” said Pregliasco.

“Her image as an effective and decisive winner would be damaged, and the political climate would change.”