Scelta Civica

Scelta Civica
Party executive	Enrico Zanetti (Segretario)
founding	4th January 2013
ideology	Political Center Liberalism Pro-European Politics
MPs	0/630
Senators	0/320
MEPs	0/76
Headquarters	Rome , Via Poli 29
Website	www.sceltacivica.it

Scelta Civica ("Bourgeois Election") is a liberal and pro-European party of the political center in Italy . It was founded in January 2013, shortly before the parliamentary elections in February of that year , to gather supporters of the then non-party interim Prime Minister Mario Monti . In the election, the party got 8.3% of the vote. From 2013 to 2016 she belonged to the coalition governments of Enrico Letta and Matteo Renzi , but no longer to the government of Paolo Gentiloni (from December 2016). For the parliamentary elections in Italy in 2018 , the party ran as part of the Noi con l'Italia list as part of the center-right electoral alliance.

founding

Mario Monti

A forerunner of the Scelta Civica was the political initiative Verso la Terza Repubblica (" Towards the Third Republic"), which was founded in November 2012 mainly by entrepreneurs (namely Luca Cordero di Montezemolo ), Christian trade unionists and representatives of Catholic lay organizations, as well as middle-class politicians to support Monti's reform policy. There were also three previously non-party ministers from Monti's "technocratic government", who had been in office since November 2011, politicians from smaller parties in the political center, moderate deviants from both the center-right Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL) and the social democratic Partito Democratico (PD) and Independent figures from business and society who wanted Monti's reform agenda to be continued. According to Monti, Scelta Civica should not be a party as such, but an association of independent citizens. Monti described the traditional political directions left, right and center as outdated. In spite of the participation of many people from the spectrum of the lost Democrazia Cristiana , the new group is not a rebirth of the same.

At the same time as the founding of the new party, Monti announced an electoral alliance (so-called list connection according to Italian electoral law) with the parties Unione di Centro (UdC) and Futuro e Libertà per l'Italia (FLI). This was called Con Monti per l'Italia ("With Monti for Italy"). In the election to the Senate, due to the specific circumstances of the electoral law, the three parties ran with a common list.

The first chairman of the new party was Andrea Riccardi , the founder of the Catholic lay community of Sant'Egidio .

Election 2013

In the elections on February 24 and 25, 2013, the Scelta Civica won 8.3% of the vote and 37 of the 630 seats in the Chamber of Deputies . The Senate list Con Monti per l'Italia won 9.1% of the vote and 18 seats, 15 of which went to members of the Scelta Civica. This made it the fourth strongest force, behind the established major parties PD and PdL and the new MoVimento 5 Stelle . Lorenzo Dellai , the former governor of Trentino , became parliamentary group leader in the House of Representatives. Mario Mauro , former spokesman for the PdL MPs in the European Parliament, who had left his party because of the increasingly anti-European politics of his party leader Silvio Berlusconi , became group leader of the Scelta Civica in the Senate. Mario Monti, who previously de facto leader (Leader) was the party and its leading candidate in the election, took over in March formally the party chairmanship.

Government participation and division

The Scelta Civica joined the grand coalition of PD, PdL and Mitte-Lager and belonged to the government of Enrico Letta, which took office in April 2013. In it she provided the Defense Minister with Mario Mauro and the Minister for European Affairs with Enzo Moavero Milanesi . Mauro's successor as chairman of the Senate parliamentary group was Gianluca Susta .

Shortly after the election, disputes over direction broke out as to whether the party should develop more in a liberal or a Christian Democratic direction. Monti resigned as party chairman in October 2013 after falling out with a majority of the Scelta Civica senators over the future direction of the party. His successor for an interim period was the MP Alberto Bombassei , founder of the brake system manufacturer Brembo and former president of the business association Confindustria . After the loss of the identification figure Monti, the fighting intensified even more. The Christian Democratic majority in the Senate parliamentary group deposed the more social liberal chairman Susta and replaced him with one of their own, Lucio Romano .

On November 15, the representatives of the Christian Democratic wing, including Minister Mauro and the parliamentary group leader Dellai , left the party congress in unison. They then founded the new party Per l'Italia ("For Italy"). 26 deputies and 8 senators remained with the Scelta Civica. Alberto Bombassei was confirmed as the full party chairman. Renato Balduzzi became his deputy . The new leader of the Scelta Civica parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies was Andrea Romano , who is close to the liberal think tank Italia Futura of Montezemolo. The remaining senators reinstated Gianluca Susta as leader.

Sinking into insignificance

For the 2014 European elections , the party joined the Centro Democratico , Fare per Fermare il Declino , Partito Repubblicano Italiano and Partito Liberale Italiano as part of the Scelta Europea electoral alliance , which supported the candidacy of the Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt as EU Commission President only 0.72% of the vote and no seats in the European Parliament. As a result, Renato Balduzzi was elected as the new party chairman in July 2014, but he resigned from his office in September.

When, after Matteo Renzi's resignation as prime minister, his successor Paolo Gentiloni did not nominate any ministers from the ranks of Scelta Civica, the party refused to support the government. In the following months, Scelta Civica moved closer to the center-right alliance of Silvio Berlusconi, which was part of the regional elections in Sicily in November 2017. For the parliamentary elections in Italy in 2018 , the party ran as part of the Noi con l'Italia list (an amalgamation of small Christian Democratic and liberal-conservative parties led by Raffaele Fitto ) as part of the center-right electoral alliance. Noi con l'Italia received 1.3% of the vote, four deputies and four senators, but none of them belonged to the Scelta Civica.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jonathan Hopkin: Bipolarity (and After). In: Erik Jones, Gianfranco Pasquino: The Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, pp. 325–338, at p. 335.
2. ↑ Markus K. Grimm: The problematic reinvention of the Italian right. The Alleanza Nazionale and its way to the center. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 349.
3. ^ Francesca Gelli: Evolution without Learning? The Contentious Issue of EU Regional Policy in Italy (2011-2016). In: Alexander Grasse u. a .: Italy between crisis and new beginnings. Reforms and attempts at reform by the Renzi government. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2018, pp. 263–296, p. 288.
4. ^ Monti, online il «manifesto» in sette punti: «Movimento civico, non un partito di centro» In: Corriere della Sera , December 31, 2012.
5. ↑ Monti presenta il simbolo "Scelta civica". Lista unica al Senato, tre alla Camera. In: La Repubblica , January 4, 2013.
6. ↑ Scelta civica, scissione è. Giannini nuovo segretario, Bombassei presidente. In: La Repubblica , November 16, 2013.