The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, acknowledged this Monday her failure in the referendum on the judicial reform promoted by her Government, after almost 54% of citizens have rejected the measure in a consultation that represents a major political setback for the far-right leader, who took office in 2022.
“Sovereignty belongs to the people and the Italians today have expressed themselves clearly. The Government did what it had promised: to carry out a reform of justice that was written in our electoral program. We have supported it until the end and then we have left the election in the hands of the citizens,” the Italian leader indicated in a video message broadcast on social networks.
Meloni has thus reiterated that he “respects the decision made by the citizens.” “There is clearly regret for a lost opportunity to modernize Italy, but this does not change our commitment to continue, with seriousness and determination, working for the good of the nation and to honor the mandate entrusted to us,” argued the prime minister.
According to the preliminary results released by the Ministry of the Interior, 53.92% of Italian citizens have voted against the judicial reform compared to 46.08% who have supported the initiative with more than half of the votes counted, with the participation rate being 58.51% on the two days of popular consultation.
The polling stations closed this Monday around 3:00 p.m. (local time) after two days of voting. The question that Italian citizens have had to answer refers to a reform of articles 87, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107 and 110 of the Constitution.
The reform, extremely complex and with very technical aspects, poses, in general terms, separate the careers of judges and prosecutors into two different bodieswith two separate, autonomously functioning senior councils of the judiciary, and a new common disciplinary body for magistrates.
One of the most controversial points is that some members of the Superior Council of the Judiciary – made up of 33 members, 20 of whom are elected by the magistrates themselves and another ten by Parliament – are selected by lottery, a mechanism defended by the Government to put an end to so-called “factionalism.”
Detractors of the measure defend that the draw would eliminate representativeness without guaranteeing impartialitythus producing a strong asymmetry between the positions elected by Parliament and those elected by the magistrates, who will have no legitimacy and will be more susceptible to political influences.
The opposition also assures that the separation of careers is a non-existent problem, since the change from one position to another is only allowed once and during the first ten years of the career, with the condition of moving to another judicial district or region in order to guarantee impartiality.
On the other hand, converting prosecutors into an independent body – regulated by their own superior council – would entail, in the opinion of its detractors, the risk of distancing them from a professional culture shared with judges and could thus turn them into figures more similar to police officers, giving way to a logic of results, with a preference for achieving more arrests and convictions.
The measure also fails to mitigate the inefficiencies of the judicial system, according to the opposition, since it multiplies costs and bureaucracy, assigning the same functions performed by a single body to three different ones.
The opposition to Meloni also raises doubts about the call for a referendum, since if the Government had wanted to intervene to separate judicial careers, it would have been enough to propose an ordinary law. The consultation, furthermore, is a confirmatory referendum in which no quorum needs to be reached for it to be valid.
The legislation – proposed by Silvio Berlusconi during his mandate as prime minister in the context of the ‘Clean Hands’ scandal – was already approved by Parliament in October 2025, although being a constitutional reform it had to be approved by popular consultation as it did not obtain two-thirds in the Chamber.
