# 2025 Italian referendum

The 2025 Italian referendum will be held on Sunday 8 and Monday 9 June, at the same time as the second round of the local elections [it], and will concern changes to the law on the acquisition of Italian citizenship for foreign residents and the repeal of some provisions on employment, three of which were originally introduced by the Jobs Act in 2016.
The referendum question on the request for Italian citizenship was initially promoted by the secretary of More Europe Riccardo Magi as well as by the parties Possibile, Italian Socialist Party, Italian Radicals and Communist Refoundation Party and numerous civil society associations, with a collection of signatures, also carried out digitally, which collected more than 637,000 signatures.
The referendum questions on work, instead, were promoted by the Italian General Confederation of Labour with a public collection of signatures, which gathered over four million signatures.
All five questions were declared admissible by the Constitutional Court during the council chamber of 20 January 2025, in which instead the proposal for a referendum to repeal the Calderoli law on differentiated autonomy was rejected, declared inadmissible.

## Referendum initiative
### Referendum on work

In the general assembly of 26 March 2024, the CGIL approved the launch of a referendum consultation [it] on four issues relating to work, three of which related to points of the Jobs Act reform (implemented by the Renzi government), as part of an overall mobilization strategy that also included a general strike (later held on 11 April), general demonstrations, popular initiative bills and support for disputes over the renewal of collective agreements. The general secretary of the union, Maurizio Landini, officially announced the launch of the signature collection for the following 25 April, on the occasion of the Anniversary of the Liberation, with numerous initiatives and stalls in various cities. The referendum campaign was accompanied by the slogan "For stable, dignified, protected and safe work I'll put my signature"; each of the four adjectives included in the sentence referred to one of the questions posed.
On 12 June 2024, the organizing secretary of the CGIL, Luigi Giove, announced that the campaign had reached and exceeded the 500,000 signatures required under Article 75 of the Italian Constitution. The signatures, quantified by Landini at four million, were finally deposited in the Supreme Court of Cassation on the following July 19.
All four questions were declared legal by the Central Referendum Office [it] on 12 December 2024. They were declared admissible by the Constitutional Court on 20 January 2025, with rulings filed on 7 February.

### Referendum on Citizenship

The referendum question that required halving the years of legal residence to apply for Italian citizenship was conceived by the secretary of More Europe Riccardo Magi who filed it with the Supreme Court on 4 September 2024, less than a month before the deadline for collecting signatures. The promoters of the referendum include the political parties More Europe, Possibile, Italian Socialist Party, Italian Radicals and Communist Refoundation Party, numerous associations of people with a migrant background such as Italians without citizenship, CoNNGI (National Coordination of New Italian Generations) and Idem Network and other organizations including Libera, Gruppo Abele [it], A Buon Diritto and Società della Ragione, as well as various personalities such as Mauro Palma [it] (former National Guarantor of the rights of persons deprived of personal liberty), Luigi Manconi and Ivan Novelli [it] (president of Greenpeace Italy [it]). The issue of the citizenship law, already at the centre of failed attempts at amendment in Parliament on several occasions, had returned to the attention of public opinion after the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris which had seen the successes of many Italian athletes of foreign origin (such as Paola Egonu and Myriam Sylla, winners of the Olympic gold medal for the women's national volleyball team) who in the past had struggled to be officially recognised as Italian.
Given the tight deadline of September 30, the promoting committee focused almost exclusively on digital signature collection using the new free platform made available for this purpose by the Government starting from July 26 and already successfully used for the signature collection for the referendum against differentiated autonomy. Despite the short time available, thanks also to the push of personalities such as the historian Alessandro Barbero, the writer Roberto Saviano, the cartoonist Zerocalcare, the director Matteo Garrone, the singers Ghali, Dargen D'Amico and Malika Ayane, the actress Kasia Smutniak and the coach of the women's national volleyball team Julio Velasco, the referendum reached the goal of 500,000 signatures on September 25. The signatures, which finally reached the number of 637,487, were deposited by the promoters at the Court of Cassation on September 30.
The question was declared compliant with the law by the Central Referendum Office [it] on 12 December 2024 and declared admissible by the Constitutional Court on 20 January 2025, with a ruling filed on 7 February.

## Questions
### Question about citizenship

* Card colour:
* Title: Italian citizenship: Halving from 10 to 5 years of the time of legal residence in Italy of the non-EU adult foreigner for the request for the granting of Italian citizenship
* Description:
Text of the question :
* Do you want to repeal art. 9, paragraph 1, letter b), limited to the words "adopted by an Italian citizen" and "subsequent to the adoption"; as well as letter f), containing the following provision: "f) to a foreigner who has resided legally for at least ten years in the territory of the Republic", of law 5 February 1992, n. 91, containing new rules on citizenship"?

### Question on increasing protections

* Card colour:
* Title: Employment contract with increasing protections – regulation of unlawful dismissals: Repeal
* Description:
Text of the question :
* Do you want the repeal of Legislative Decree no. 23 of 4 March 2015, containing “Provisions regarding permanent employment contracts with increasing protections, in implementation of Law no. 183 of 10 December 2014” in its entirety?

### Question about small businesses

* Card colour:
* Title: Small Businesses - Layoffs and related compensation: partial repeal
* Description:
Text of the question :
* Do you want the repeal of Article 8 of Law No. 604 of 15 July 1966, containing “Rules on individual dismissals”, as replaced by Article 2, paragraph 3, of Law No. 108 of 11 May 1990, limited to the words: “between one”, the words “and a maximum of 6” and the words “The maximum amount of the aforementioned compensation may be increased up to 10 months’ salary for employees with seniority of more than ten years and up to 14 months’ salary for employees with seniority of more than twenty years, if employed by an employer who employs more than fifteen employees.”?

### "Stable work" question

* Card colour:
* Title: Partial repeal of provisions on the application of a term to subordinate employment contracts, maximum duration and conditions for extensions and renewals
* Description:
Text of the question :
* Do you want the repeal of Article 19 of Legislative Decree No. 81 of 15 June 2015, containing “Organic discipline of employment contracts and revision of the regulations on duties, pursuant to Article 1, paragraph 7, of Law No. 183 of 10 December 2014”, paragraph 1, limited to the words “not exceeding twelve months. The contract may have a longer duration, but in any case”, the words “in the presence of at least one of the following conditions”, the words “in the absence of the provisions referred to in letter a), in the collective agreements applied in the company, and in any case by 31 December 2024, for technical, organizational and production needs identified by the parties;” and the words “b bis)”; paragraph 1-bis, limited to the words “lasting more than twelve months” and the words “from the date of exceeding the twelve-month term”; paragraph 4, limited to the words “in case of renewal,” and to the words “only when the overall term exceeds twelve months”; Article 21, paragraph 01, limited to the words “freely in the first twelve months and, subsequently,”?

### "Safe Work" Question

* Card colour:
* Title: Exclusion of joint liability of the client, the contractor and the subcontractor for injuries suffered by the employee of a contracting or subcontracting company, as a consequence of the specific risks inherent in the activity of the contracting or subcontracting companies: Repeal
* Description:
Text of the question :
* Do you want the repeal of art. 26, paragraph 4, of Legislative Decree no. 81 of 9 April 2008, containing “Implementation of Article 1 of Law no. 123 of 3 August 2007, regarding the protection of health and safety in the workplace” as amended by art. 16 of Legislative Decree no. 106 of 3 August 2009, by art. 32 of Legislative Decree no. 69 of 21 June 2013, converted with amendments by Law no. 98 of 9 August 2013, as well as by art. 13 of Legislative Decree no. 146 of 21 October 2021, converted with amendments by Law no. 215, limited to the words “The provisions of this paragraph do not apply to damages resulting from specific risks inherent in the activity of contracting or subcontracting companies.”

### Questions not allowed

A further question concerning the total repeal of the Calderoli law on differentiated autonomy, supported by almost all the opposition parties to the Meloni Government and by various associations, had collected the necessary signatures to be filed with the Court of Cassation, as well as being formally requested by five regional councils (of Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Apulia, Sardinia and Tuscany). However, on 20 January 2025 the question was declared inadmissible by the Constitutional Court following its previous ruling no. 192/2024, which had declared many parts of the law unconstitutional, with the consequence of having made the object of the question objectively obscure – significantly reduced as a result of the aforementioned ruling – as well as lacking clarity as to its purpose.
Precisely because of sentence no. 192/2024, a second question of partial repeal of the law requested by the same 5 regional councils had already been considered outdated by the Central Office for the Referendum of the Court of Cassation.

## Positions
### Main political parties

The following table lists all the positions taken by the political parties present in the Italian Parliament and European Parliament or associated with one of the committees promoting the questions.
| Party | Citizenship | Work | Work | Work | Work | Source |
| Party | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Source |
| Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) | | | | | | |
| Partito Democratico (PD) | | | | | | |
| Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) | | | | | | |
| Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) | | | | | | |
| Forza Italia (FI) | | | | | | |
| Italia Viva (IV) | | | | | | |
| Azione (Az) | | | | | | |
| Europa Verde (EV) | | | | | | |
| Sinistra Italiana (SI) | | | | | | |
| Südtiroler Volkspartei (SVP) | | | | | | |
| Noi Moderati (NM) | | | | | | |
| +Europa (+E) | | | | | | |
| Coraggio Italia (CI) | | | | | | |
| Democrazia Solidale (DemoS) | | | | | | |
| Movimento Associativo Italiani all'Estero (MAIE) | | | | | | |
| Unione di Centro (UdC) | | | | | | |
| Campobase (Cb) | | | | | | |
| Sud chiama Nord (ScN) | | | | | | |
| Centristi per l'Europa (CpE) | | | | | | |
| Centro Democratico (CD) | | | | | | |
| Democrazia Cristiana con Rotondi (DCR) | | | | | | |
| Partito Liberaldemocratico (PLD) | | | | | | |
| Partito Progressista (PP) | | | | | | |
| Verdi del Sudtirolo/Alto Adige (VGV) | | | | | | |
| Union Valdôtaine (UV) | | | | | | |
| Partito della Rifondazione Comunista (PRC) | | | | | | |
| Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) | | | | | | |
| Possibile (Pos) | | | | | | |
| Radicali Italiani (RI) | | | | | | |

### Referendum Committees

On 10 March 2025, the president of the citizenship referendum committee, Riccardo Magi, and his correspondent for the referendums on work, Maurizio Landini, announced that they would attend a meeting, held the following day, with the Secretary of the Council of Ministers, Alfredo Mantovano, and the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, requesting the possibility of voting for students, workers and out-of-town patients, as well as the calling of a single election day for the referendum and administrative elections and adequate media coverage by the RAI networks and other broadcasters. On 13 March, the Council of Ministers established that the referendums would be held on Sunday 8 and Monday 9 June of the same year, at the same time as the run-off round of the administrative elections , in contrast with the request of the promoters to make the date of the consultations coincide with the first round of the aforementioned elections. On the same occasion, the approval of a decree-law was announced which would have allowed voters who had been away from home for study, work or medical reasons for at least three months before the referendum to request to vote in a polling station other than their municipality of residence, by submitting an application by 5 May.