So is Italian justice really “broken”?<\/p>\n
The system is certainly chronically overloaded, with some of the longest-running trials in the EU.<\/p>\n
But the reform won’t address that.<\/p>\n
The referendum looks at separating the career paths of judges and prosecutors, as well as creating distinct bodies to govern them. It also proposes a new disciplinary court for both.<\/p>\n
The potential impact depends entirely on who you ask: many Italians struggle to understand this referendum at all.<\/p>\n
The proposal is a project of the late Silvio Berlusconi’s party, Forza Italia, part of the current coalition.<\/p>\n
Italy’s oligarch prime minister of many years was forever in and out of court and railed against the judiciary as a supposed “communist” block on his power.<\/p>\n
Meloni herself has also clashed publicly with the courts, claiming that “powerful factions” routinely derail her signature policies, especially on migration.<\/p>\n
In Milan recently she claimed – with no evidence – that rejecting the referendum would mean “even more\u2026 immigrants, rapists, paedophiles, drug dealers being freed and putting your security at risk.”<\/p>\n
Such rhetoric is one reason why opposition parties are so wary of this reform.<\/p>\n
They fear Meloni’s real aim is to subjugate the judiciary to her political control.<\/p>\n
She and her team deny that.<\/p>\n
But at a time of global uncertainty and rising prices caused by an unpopular US war, they also know voters may use the referendum to vent their frustration.<\/p>\n
“The geopolitical situation is very tough, of course. People are scared. I completely feel that. But we need to stay focused on the purpose of the referendum,” Andrea di Giuseppe, a member of Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party, argues.<\/p>\n
He suggested that an assessment of Meloni’s own record could wait for the general election next year.<\/p>\n
“If you are not happy about this government, then in 2027 [you can] just kick it off the bus, change to another government. Now, the matter of the referendum is what counts.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So is Italian justice really “broken”? The system is certainly chronically overloaded, with some of the longest-running trials…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-842271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116271466828010855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}