ROME. The Senate approved the constitutional reform that gives 18-year-olds the vote to elect the Senate. With this vote, Parliament definitively approved the reform that will be promulgated in three months to allow for a possible confirmatory referendum, given that two-thirds are missing from the Chamber.
178 senators voted in favor of the reform, 15 voted against and 30 abstained. This reform will come into force from the next political elections and will ensure, as explained by the rapporteur Dario Parrini, president of the Constitutional Affairs Commission, that the two chambers have the same electoral base and therefore that they have the same political majorities. Almost 4 million young people, between 18 and 24 years old, will be involved in this constitutional change by acquiring the active electorate for the Senate.
«With the favorable vote of the Senate in the last reading of the reform that will finally give the eighteen-twenty-five year olds the active electorate in the Senate, Parliament affirms its role in the constitutional update. We will have to wait three months for the entry into force because due to some absences we have not reached two thirds ». Stefano Ceccanti of the Democratic Party affirms it. “There is something to be satisfied with not only on the merits, because a few million citizens of age will finally have the fullness of rights and because it becomes practically impossible for the Chambers to be born with different majorities, but also for the method. That reform is in all respects parliamentary and not only for the signing of the bills (two of the Democratic Party, one of my colleague Bruno Bossio and one of mine; one of the M5s first signed by Brescia, a Meloni for Fdi), but also for the place where it was born, the Constitutional Affairs Commission of the Chamber. When the text on the reduction of parliamentarians was discussed at first reading, President Brescia declared many amendments, including this one, inadmissible, but we agreed on the presentation of bills to be dealt with separately quickly and with a double rapporteur, one by the majority (colleague Corneli of the m5s) and one of opposition to the Conte 1 Government (the undersigned). It all started like this, discussing in the Commission, between parliamentarians, beyond the divide between the majority and the opposition. No decree-laws, no trusts, no armor. A special thanks also to Dario Parrini who was speaker at the Senate and who with many others has worked hard at Palazzo Madama ».
The 5S senators rejoice, who in a note write: “The path of timely innovations to our Constitution continues, inaugurated in this legislature by the 5 Star MoVement: with the definitive yes of Palazzo Madama for the extension to eighteen-year-olds of the vote for the representatives of the Senate , let’s heal an anachronism that negatively characterized our country and fully involve over 4 million young people in the democratic process. Our children are the main recipients of public policies that must necessarily look to the future, they are first of all they receive the benefits or harms of policy choices. And then it is right that they should be given the right but also the responsibility to also choose the elected senators, not just the deputies. We are proud of the fact that thanks to the impulse of the 5 Star Movement, the first parliamentary force, our historic battle has come to fruition ».
However, there are those who disregard: “Forza Italia will not join the almost unanimous chorus in favor of this reform. We have great respect for young people but also for seriousness and young people do not ask us to vote for the Senate, instead they ask for seriousness, more opportunities and better than others reject the policy of likes, of which this reform is a clear expression “. The deputy vice-president of the senators of Forza Italia Lucio Malan said this in the classroom, when declaring the vote of abstention.
«I would like to point out that after the reduction of parliamentarians that we have opposed – added Malan – it was necessary to immediately start a series of reforms to deal with the imbalances that the wrong reform will produce from the next legislature. It was Zingaretti, then secretary of the Democratic Party, among the first to say that he would immediately move on to the consequent acts. Nothing, nothing has happened, if not this law which actually makes things worse. Since 1963 when the Senate was made up of 315 members, the voters for each senator were 98,000, up from 148,000 in the last election in 2018 due to the increase in population. Well, after the cut of the parliamentarians, we will have a senator for every 233 thousand voters and now with the vote for eighteen year olds, one for every 260 thousand. Young people will thus have much less power in choosing their representatives. We know well – he observed – that it is difficult not to vote in favor of this reform but we are to do serious things and not to pass laws lightly that can give immediate consents on social media but do damage with their application. We are – he concluded – to really give power to the people, even to the youngest, a real power, not fake because if we damage the institutional bodies the power that they lose does not go to the people but to the great economic powers or even worse to foreign powers, such as the China”.