Parliamentary groups have no legal definition. According to Rule 14 of the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies, they are ‘associations of Deputies’ and ‘subjects required for the functioning of the Chamber.’ According to the doctrine, they are the projection, the reflection of the parties in Parliament.

1. PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
July 2022

2. WHAT THEY ARE
Parliamentary groups have no legal
definition. According to Rule 14 of the Rules
of Procedure of the Chamber of Deputies,
they are ‘associations of Deputies’ and
‘subjects required for the functioning of the
Chamber.’
According to the doctrine, they are the
projection, the reflection of the parties
in Parliament. However, they play a very
specific role in that they are essential to the
functioning of the Houses.
All MPs must belong to a group, except life
Senators. MPs may change group during the
legislature, at any time and as many times as
they like.

3. GROUPS IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES
However, the Chamber may
have smaller groups if the
group represents a party that
has submitted its list in 20
constituencies and obtained
at least 300,000 valid votes for
their list.
A minimum of twenty deputies
shall be required to establish a
Parliamentary Group
According to the Rules of Procedure
of the Lower House, deputies that
have not declared what group
they belong to are put in a Mixed
Group, where they can form political
groupings.
The Rules of the Senate do not
allow this, but it happens anyway
and is now standard practice in both
Houses of Parliament.
“

4. At least 10 senators are required to form
a group, which must represent a party or
movement
Senators who represent a language
minority recognised by the Law can form a
parliamentary group with only 5 senators.
whose candidates ran for and were
elected to the Senate under the same
party symbol (art. 14).
... AND IN THE SENATE
“

5. JOBS, INTERNAL RULES AND ALLOCATIONS
Each group appoints a President,
Vice-presidents and Secretaries
(or a Steering Committee).
Within 30 days after being formed,
they must approve a Statute
(for the Chamber of Deputies)
or Rules (for the Senate), which
includes the subjects/bodies
that will be responsible for the
group’s accounting and financial
management.
Each group is allocated premises,
assets and an annual contribution
from the Parliament for their
parliamentary activity, research,
communication and staff
remuneration.

6. ACCOUNTING
Each year Groups must
approve a Financial
Statement based on
shared criteria that is
submitted to the President
of their House. In the
Senate, the statement must
be prepared by a statutory
audit firm selected by the
Senate Bureau (Art. 16-bis).
The Statement is checked
for conformity by the
Quaestors, a step that is
required for the Groups to
receive financial resources
for future years. In fact,
if they fail to submit a
Statement or if such
Statement is incomplete,
the Group will lose its
funding.

7. XVIII LEGISLATURE: PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
In the 4 March 2018 political
elections, the parties obtained the
following seats:
What is most interesting is that, in the Senate,
Forza Italia obtained just a few seats more
than the League and is the second largest
group in terms of the number of Deputies.
Five Star Movement
The League
for Salvini Premier
Democratic Party
Forza Italia –
Berlusconi Premier
Brothers of Italy
Mixed Group
Five Star Movement
The League for Salvini Premier-
Sardinian Action Party
Democratic Party
Forza Italia, Berlusconi Premier-
Union of the Centre (UDC)
Brothers of Italy
Mixed Group
Group for the Autonomies
58

8. THE CASE OF THE FREE
AND EQUAL PARTY
In the 2018 elections, the Free and
Equal Party exceeded the threshold in
both Houses of Parliament. The Free
and Equal deputies formed a grouping
within the Mixed Group, both in the
Chamber of Deputies and in the Senate
(14 deputies and 4 senators).
A little later, on 9 April, the Office of the
President of the Chamber allowed Free
and Equal to form an Autonomous
Group. However, Free and Equal only
has 10 deputies, yet it continues to have
its own Group.

9. PARLIAMENTARY “TRANSFUGISM”
AND THE XVIII LEGISLATURE
This is an age-old phenomenon, however starting with
the Second Republic, it started to become common again
in parliamentary and political life. ‘Transfugism’ is when
an MP, for many different reasons, deserts their political
Group and joins another one. They can do this because,
according to art. 67 of the Italian Constitution
Each member of Parliament represents the
Nation; members shall carry out their duties
free from imperative mandate
However, this operational mandate restriction – or better
the distorted way that it is applied – has led to a high
incidence of parliamentary mobility.
And the XVIII Legislature indeed saw its fair share of this
phenomenon...
“

10. LA FORMAZIONE DEI GRUPPI
E IL TRASFORMISMO (IL CASO LeU)
Italia Viva (IV) went to the Chamber
with 26 deputies and to the Senate
with 14 senators and partnered with
the Italian Socialist Party to form
an Autonomous Group.
Now the IV Group has 31 members
in the Chamber and 15 in the Senate.
In 2019, not long after the formation
of the Second Conte Government,
Matteo Renzi left the Democratic
Party to found Italia Viva, which
was joined by several of his
faithful followers: from Maria Elena
Boschi to Roberto Giachetti, Teresa
Bellanova, Ivan Scalfarotto, and
other political moderates, including
members of the centre-right like
Maria Teresa Baldini (formerly
with Brothers of Italy) and Davide
Bendinelli (formerly with Forza Italia).
NEW PARTIES, NEW GROUPS:
THE BIRTH OF ITALIA VIVA

11. … AND TOGETHER
FOR THE FUTURE
Last June constant tension between the
leader of the Five Star Movement and
former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte
and Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio led to
a split in the party and Di Maio’s creation
of Together for the Future.
The new political group has 52 deputies
in the Chamber, yet in the Senate,
even though it uses the symbol of the
Democratic Centre, it doesn’t reach the
required minimum of 10 senators.

12. THERE’S AN ALTERNATIVE: THE FIVE STAR
MOVEMENT VS THE DRAGHI GOVERNMENT
In February 2021 the Five
Star Movement MPs in the
Chamber of Deputies and the
Senate who did not express
their confidence in the new
Draghi Government left the
group and created a new
grouping within the Mixed
Group: There’s An Alternative,
with 13 deputies and 6
senators. They state:
Our initiative stems from
our opposition to the
Draghi government and to
‘technical’ governments in
general and the external
constraint behind which
neo-liberal policies are
hidden
“

13. The group Constitution, Environment,
Labour was created on 22 January 2022,
just before the fifth round of voting
in the election for the President of the
Republic. Senate President Elisabetta
Casellati authorised the formation of this
new group, which included 10 senators
who had left the Five Star Movement
headed by Elio Lannutti. This decision
sparked polemic against Casellati’s
candidacy for President of the Republic
because she was accused of using this
as a tool to gain consensus. Today the
group has 13 members.
Coraggio Italia (‘Cheer up, Italy’), a
centre-right political formation led
by Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, was
founded on 26 May 2021 and, since it
has 24 deputies, is an Autonomous
Group. Instead, in the Senate it only
has 7 senators.
However, in 2022 the group was
dissolved after many MPs deserted
it. This led to the creation of Vinciamo
Italia (Let’s Win, Italy), a grouping that
merged with Let’s change/Italy in the
Centre of Giovanni Toti and Gaetano
Quagliariello in the Mixed Group.
THE CASE OF CORAGGIO ITALIA AND
CONSTITUTION, ENVIRONMENT, LABOUR

14. “TRANSFUGISM”
IN THE XVIII LEGISLATURE
So many individual or bunch of MPs have decided to switch Groups that it
has deeply upset parliamentary balance. The Mixed Group has never been
as large as it is today, with 85 deputies in the Chamber and 39 in the Senate.
For example:

15. Enrico Costa, Minister of Regional
Affairs during the Renzi and Gentiloni
governments, who got his start in
politics with Forza Italia, was elected
to Parliament in 2018 with Maurizio
Lupi’s group Us with Italy.
However, within a month he had
second thoughts and went back to
Forza Italia. Then he changed again
in 2020 and went to Carlo Calenda’s
Action party.
Gregorio De Falco, a Senator for the
Five Star Movement, was ousted
from his group in December 2018
due to his open dissent against the
immigration policies adopted by the
First Conte Government. He entered
+Europe/Action in the Mixed Group
but left a few months later.
Nicola Carè, ran for the Senate
in 2013 on the list of Monti for
Italy, but didn’t get elected.
He ran again in 2018 for the
Chamber of Deputies, this time
with the Democratic Party (PD)
and was elected by the Foreign
Constituency (Africa, Asia, Oceania
and Antarctica). In 2019 he
switched to Italia Viva but then
returned to the PD in 2020.

16. Michela Rostan, was elected to
Parliament in 2013 with the PD.
In 2017 she joined Article One and
was re-elected with this party in
2018 on the Free and Equal list
(which also included Article One).
In 2020 she left Article One due to
‘its clear difficulty in facing political
battles I consider important, in total
solitude.’ She changed to Italia Viva
(in the past she was a Renzi fan!),
but a year later Rostan expressed
her vote of confidence in the Conte
Government, unlike Renzi, and
joined the Mixed Group. And now?
She’s with Forza Italia!
Vito Rosario Petrocelli, formerly
the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs
Committee of the Senate, openly
backed Russia and opposed sending
weapons to support to the Ukrainian
resistance. He was asked to resign by
the President of the Senate, but refused.
Then on 10 May 2022, following the
mass resignations of the Committee
members, the Select Committee on
Rules ordered the Foreign Affairs
Committee to be dissolved, which
caused Petrocelli’s office to lapse. He
was later ousted from the Five Star
Movement and joined Constitution,
Environment, Labour.

17. HOW TO CURB PARLIAMENTARY TRANSFUGISM?
An attempt was made in 2017 to
prevent MPs from freely deserting
their groups and joining other ones
when the Senate Rules introduced
some corrective measures:
❯ Rule 14, section 4 states that
This new provision also adds that the
Senator must be connected to a party
that ran in the elections.
❯ ‘Authorised’ or ‘execptional’ groups
are no longer allowed. Only groups
representing minority languages can
be formed with less than 10 senators;
❯ Rule 13, section 1-bis states that
Each Group shall comprise at least
ten Senators from a party or political
movement, or a combination of
parties and political movements,
whose candidates ran for and were
elected to the Senate under the
same party symbol
“ A Vice President or Secretary who
makes a decision to join a different
Parliamentary Group to the one to
which they belonged at the time of
their election shall lapse from office
“

18. THE REFORM OF PARLIAMENTARY RULES
Even Italian President Sergio
Mattarella urged the Presidents of
the Chamber of Deputies and the
Senate to reform the Parliamentary
Rules, and now this is being done.
The main goal is to reorganise
parliamentary activities starting
with the next 2023 legislature
by reducing the number of MPs,
however also parliamentary
transfugism has been tackled.
Especially in the Senate, where they
are further ahead in the process
to approve the Rules compared to
the Chamber, the new rules would
(Document II no. 12):
❯ allow senators to not belong to any
group, i.e. senators may leave their
group but they are allowed not to
join another one;
❯ moreover, if a Senator switches to
a new group after being ousted from
their own group or resigning, the
group that takes in the ousted MP will
not receive additional resources.
The text, approved by the Select
Committee on Rules, was sent to the
Assembly for examination last 7 July.

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