page_title: Centre-right coalition
section_title: House of Freedoms
hierarchical_section_title: Centre-right coalition / History / House of Freedoms
caption_attribution_description: Silvio Berlusconi
context_page_description: The centre-right coalition is a political alliance of political parties in Italy, active—under several forms and names—since 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi entered politics and formed his Forza Italia party.
  In the 1994 general election, under the leadership of Berlusconi, the centre-right ran with two coalitions, the Pole of Freedoms in northern Italy and Tuscany and the Pole of Good Government in central and southern Italy. In the 1996 general election, after the Northern League had left in late 1994, the centre-right coalition took the name of Pole for Freedoms. The Northern League returned in 2000, and the coalition was re-formed as the House of Freedoms; this lasted until 2008.
  Since 2008, when Forza Italia and National Alliance merged into The People of Freedom, the coalition has not had official names. The new Forza Italia was formed in late 2013; for the 2018 general election it joined forces with the Northern League, the Brothers of Italy and a collection of mainly centrist forces named Us with Italy–Union of the Centre.
  In 2018, the Lega Nord formed a government coalition with the Five Star Movement and without its centre-right allies, which entered the opposition.
context_section_description: The House of Freedoms was the successor of the Pole of Freedoms/Pole of Good Government and the Pole for Freedoms.
  In the run-up of the 2001 general election, after a six-year spell in opposition, which Berlusconi called "the crossing of the desert", he managed to re-unite the coalition under the "House of Freedoms" banner. According to its leader, the alliance was a "broad democratic arch, composed of the democratic right, namely AN, the great democratic centre, namely Forza Italia, CCD and CDU, and the democratic left represented by the League, the New PSI, and the Italian Republican Party.
  The CdL won the 2001 general election by a landslide and, consequently, the Berlusconi II Cabinet was formed. In government, FI, whose strongholds included Lombardy as well as Sicily, and the LN, which was active only in the Centre-North, formed the so-called "axis of the North", through the special relationship between three Lombards leaders, Berlusconi, Giulio Tremonti and Umberto Bossi; on the other side of the coalition, AN and the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), the party emerged from the merger of the CCD and the CDU in late 2002, became the natural representatives of Southern interests.
  In 2003 the CdL was routed in local elections by The Olive Tree and the LN threatened to pull out. Also the 2004 European Parliament election were disappointing for FI and the coalition as a whole, even though AN, the UDC and the LN did better than five years before. As a result, Berlusconi and FI were weaker within the CdL.
  In 2005 the coalition lost heavily in regional elections, losing six of the eight regions it controlled. The defeat was particularly damaging in the South, while the only two regions which the coalition managed to keep, Lombardy and Veneto, were in the North, where the LN was decisive . This led to a government crisis, particularly after the UDC pulled its ministers out. A few days later, the Berlusconi III Cabinet was formed with minor changes from the previous cabinet.
  In the 2006 general election the CdL, which had opened its ranks to a number of minor parties, lost to The Olive Tree.
caption: Silvio Berlusconi at a PdL rally, 2008.
exif: {}