On the 25th of July, 2024, the government platform for signing referendums was delivered in Italy. It is the final step of a long journey started in 2015 with a series of political and judicial actions. This journey reached a critical point in 2019 when, within the Staderini-De Lucia v. Italy case, the United Nations condemned Italy for violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights due to obstacles to collecting signatures for direct democracy tools. Thanks to these appeals, the UN compelled Italy to remove the "unreasonable obstacles" to signature collection introduced by a 1970 law.
As a consequences, the need to revise the signature collection regulations pushed the Italian Parliament to adopt a provision in the 2020 budget law, planning the creation of a public platform for digital subscriptions expected by January 2022. Since then, two legislative measures have regulated the platform's technical functioning: the Prime Minister's decree of 9 September 2022 and the decree-law of 18 October 2023, transferring ownership of the platform to the Ministry of Justice. This latter measure further delayed the platform's publication after the preparatory work completed by the Draghi government, thanks to the efforts of the Minister for Digital Transition, Vittorio Colao.
This succession of legal modifications would never have become central if the Associazione Luca Coscioni had not demonstrated in 2021 that, once bureaucratic obstacles to signature collection were removed, online democracy is not only possible but also popular. In the absence of the public platform, an amendment presented by MP Riccardo Magi in July 2021 allowed the collection of digital signatures on referendums and popular initiatives through private platforms.
Thanks to this tool, the Luca Coscioni Association collected almost one million online signatures in two months for the Legal Euthanasia and Legal Cannabis referendums. The signatures were duly verified and accepted by the Corte di Cassazione within the legal deadlines.
Private platforms naturally incur service costs, which can be borne by the promoting committees or the signatories, but do not provide the service for the required "coupling" between authenticated signatures and the corresponding voter registration certificates, required by those coordinating the signature collection campaign. The costs (almost €1.50 per signature) and cooperation with municipalities not yet equipped to issue digital documents within the 24-hour legal period can discourage the use of online signatures.
The public and free platform overcomes these second-last obstacles; second-last because, as highlighted by the UN in the Staderini-De Lucia v. Italy case, there is no obligation for the public broadcasting service to guarantee information during the signature collection and not after the fact.
In summer 2022, Eumans launched an initiative called “Referendum e Democrazia” (Referendum and Democracy), intending to present lists for that year's political elections through online subscription of the forms. After a series of public appeals to Parliament and the Government, a warning to the Minister of the Interior, and a hunger strike for dialogue by a dozen activists, rather than complaining about not succeeding, lists were compiled for single-member and multi-member constituencies for all constituencies of the Chamber and Senate and the European constituency. In a dozen cases, the necessary online signatures were collected - gathered on the private platform, thus with costs borne by the promoters or signatories - and the lists were submitted in person to all the Courts of Appeal.
This initiative was faced with institutional silence following public appeals and, therefore, the rejection of all lists - albeit with different motivations from city to city. However, about ten appeals were initiated, leading to the decision of the Civitavecchia Court to refer to the Constitutional Court the issue presented by Carlo Gentili, who, due to his illness, cannot sign manually. The hearing is scheduled by the end of 2024.
By making this a central theme for all citizens, including those suffering from severe disabilities who would face discrimination in accessing political rights without digital means, the Luca Coscioni Association and Eumans have continuously committed themselves over these years. After the over 30,000 signatures collected to present the lists in 2022, over 47,000 signatures were collected on an open letter by Marco Gentili asking the government to quickly release the public platform and expand it to electoral issues as well. When necessary, hunger strikes were conducted, such as those by Lorenzo Mineo and Virginia Fiume in 2021 and 2022.
The creation of this new tool in favor of direct participation in institutional decisions is itself the result of activating all the instruments provided by the Italian Constitution and international organizations to ensure civil society's role in the civil and political life of their country.
