The electoral law has also been passed by the Senate. However, Ciriani comments: “A vote of confidence? I have my doubts.” Clash with Madrid over Schengen

The electoral law has just received the long-awaited green light from the Senate, with 113 in favour, 71 against and two abstentions; the preferential vote system and the centre-right alliance have weathered immense turmoil. Shortly thereafter, a senator from FdI stretched out on the sofas in Palazzo Madama, answering his phone: “Yes, we’ve just passed it, but to me it still seems like a load of rubbish...”. This is Meloni’s fear, at a time when the Spanish government is describing Rome’s extension of the Schengen suspension as “indecent and shameful”. That, despite everything, when it returns to the Chamber of Deputies at the end of the month, the Stabilicum bill will still end up being shot down. As another senator from the ruling coalition puts it, “it’s far from over”.

Let’s make one thing clear straight away: yesterday’s session in the Senate was not a day marked by any particular drama. The approval of the electoral law took place almost without fanfare, by the standards to which Parliament has accustomed us. A tired ritual. Opposition placards reading ‘no to the rigged law’, a few speeches from the majority to fend off accusations of ‘not having carried out a single reform in these four years’. It was almost as if their thoughts were already elsewhere: at the Chamber of Deputies. There, as Nazario Pagano, chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee, made clear yesterday, the centre-right aims to table the bill as early as today. What is the timetable? The aim is to begin the general debate in the Chamber from 28 September. And given that the bill can only be amended in those parts that were altered in the Senate, the right wing is convinced it can secure approval fairly quickly, by the first week of October. “Call a vote of confidence? We’ll decide that in due course. I have some reservations,” says Luca Ciriani, Minister for Relations with Parliament, as he walks through the Transatlantico. The ‘sherpas’ (how will we manage without this term once the electoral law has been definitively shelved?), the technical experts who have been following the proceedings on behalf of the various parties, explain that the issue of a vote of confidence is not a matter of time constraints. “That will happen anyway, given that if we slip into October we’ll be in the pre-budget session.” The practical and political implications are an entirely different matter. Because if it wants to avoid the spectre of a secret ballot, the government will have to call for a vote of confidence – something it did not do during the first reading in the Chamber of Deputies (where the government wavered after the preference voting system was scrapped). As constitutional expert Salvatore Curreri explains to Il Foglio, “an open vote remains the rule for all matters where a secret ballot is not prescribed. And in the case of the electoral law, requiring one is merely optional”. There is already a precedent doing the rounds which serves to reassure Meloni: when, in October 2017, the then Gentiloni government called for a vote of confidence for the approval of the Rosatellum. “It is clear that we could not be accused of forcing the issue by those who themselves took the lead in doing so.”

This concerns the purely parliamentary front. But the main concerns (perhaps far greater than the ongoing crisis with Spain over Schengen, reignited by yesterday’s attacks in Madrid) regarding the approval of the Stabilicum may well arise once the parliamentary process has been completed. That is, when the opposition parties, as they have announced, lodge a constitutional appeal. The most active on this front are Avs and +Europa, which have already instructed their legal teams to examine the matter in detail. Elly Schlein and Giuseppe Conte also see good prospects here, not least because a ruling by the Constitutional Court could delay the holding of the primaries. A further appeal is being prepared by the constitutional expert Roberto Zaccaria, commissioned by the committee linked to the Demo Foundation, chaired by Gianni Cuperlo. One of the key issues is the disproportionate number of signatures required, but that is not the only one. However, not everyone is convinced that a ruling will be issued in time, before any early elections. As Ivano Fossati put it: “They say there is a time for sowing / And a longer time for waiting / I say there was a dreamt-of time / that one had to dream of.” The same holds true for those who are awaiting the definitive green light or clinging to the very last twist in the tale.