The 2025 Italian referendum, officially the 2025 Abrogative Referendums in Italy (Italian: Referendum abrogativi in Italia del 2025), were held on 8 and 9 June, concurrently with the second round of the local elections. The objective of the referendums was the repeal of four labor laws, two of which were originally introduced as part of the Jobs Act in 2016, and an amendment to the law on the acquisition of Italian citizenship by foreign residents.
The referendum question on the request for Italian citizenship was initially promoted by the More Europe secretary Riccardo Magi, as well as by the parties Possible, Italian Socialist Party, Italian Radicals, and Communist Refoundation Party, and numerous civil society associations, with a collection of signatures, also carried out digitally, which collected more than 637,000 signatures. The referendum questions on work were promoted by the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL) with a public collection of signatures, which gathered over four million signatures.
All five questions were declared admissible by the Constitutional Court during the council chamber of 20 January 2025, in which instead the proposal for a referendum to repeal the Calderoli law on differentiated autonomy was rejected and declared inadmissible. For the result to be valid, at least 50% + 1 eligible voters quorum had to be reached with at least 50% of participants approving. As none of the referendums reached the required turnout, the results were consequently rendered void.
Referendum initiative
Referendum on labour
After numerous strikes and demonstrations against the labour reform introduced by the Jobs Act in March 2014 by the Renzi government, in 2016 the CGIL launched a campaign to collect signatures to carry out a referendum to restore the protections of Article 18 of the Workers' Statute for unlawful dismissals and extend them to all companies with at least five employees: this article, which provided for the reinstatement of the worker in the workplace in the case of unlawful dismissal, had been amended in 2015 by the Jobs Act, which instead provided for economic compensation. The CGIL managed to collect 3.3 million signatures throughout Italy; however, on 11 January 2017 the Constitutional Court declared the referendum question inadmissible because it had also been badly formulated in a proactive manner in order to extend the protection of Article 18 to companies with fewer than 15 employees. Further questions concerning the abolition of work vouchers and the repeal of the provisions limiting joint and several liability in the field of contracting were instead admitted by the Constitutional Court, so the date of 28 May 2017 was set for the abrogative referendums to be held; however, the Gentiloni government urgently approved Decree-Law no. 25 of 17 March 2017, which abrogated the provisions subject to the referendum, which was therefore annulled after the entry into force of the conversion law No. 49 of 20 April 2017.
In the general assembly of 26 March 2024, the CGIL approved the launch of a referendum consultation on four issues relating to work, three of which related to points of the Jobs Act reform (implemented by the Renzi government), as part of an overall mobilization strategy that also included a general strike (later held on 11 April), general demonstrations, popular initiative bills and support for disputes over the renewal of collective agreements. The general secretary of the union, Maurizio Landini, officially announced the launch of the signature collection for the following 25 April, Liberation Day, with numerous initiatives and stalls in various cities. The referendum campaign was accompanied by the slogan "For stable, dignified, protected and safe work I'll put my signature"; each of the four adjectives included in the sentence referred to one of the questions posed.
On 12 June 2024, the organizing secretary of the CGIL, Luigi Giove, announced that the campaign had reached and exceeded the 500,000 signatures required under Article 75 of the Italian Constitution. The signatures, quantified by Landini at four million, were finally deposited in the Supreme Court of Cassation on the following July 19. All four questions were declared legal by the Central Referendum Office on 12 December 2024. They were declared admissible by the Constitutional Court on 20 January 2025, with rulings filed on 7 February.
Referendum on citizenship
The referendum question that required halving the years of legal residence to apply for Italian citizenship was initiated by More Europe secretary Riccardo Magi, who filed it with the Supreme Court of Cassation on 4 September 2024, less than a month before the deadline for collecting signatures. The promoters of the referendum include the political parties More Europe, Possible, Italian Socialist Party, Italian Radicals, and Communist Refoundation Party, numerous associations of people with a migrant background such as Italians without citizenship, CoNNGI (National Coordination of New Italian Generations), and Idem Network, and other organizations including Libera, Gruppo Abele, A Buon Diritto and Società della Ragione, as well as various personalities such as Mauro Palma (former National Guarantor of the rights of persons deprived of personal liberty), Luigi Manconi, and Ivan Novelli (president of Greenpeace Italy). The issue of the citizenship law, already at the centre of failed attempts at amendment in Parliament on several occasions, had returned to the attention of public opinion after the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris which had seen the successes of many Italian athletes of foreign origin (such as Paola Egonu and Myriam Sylla, winners of the Olympic gold medal for the women's national volleyball team) who in the past had struggled to be officially recognised as Italian.
Given the tight deadline of September 30, the promoting committee focused almost exclusively on digital signature collection using the new free platform made available for this purpose by the Government starting from July 26 and already successfully used for the signature collection for the referendum against differentiated autonomy. Despite the short time available, thanks also to the push of personalities such as the historian Alessandro Barbero, the writer Roberto Saviano, the cartoonist Zerocalcare, the director Matteo Garrone, the singers Ghali, Dargen D'Amico and Malika Ayane, the actress Kasia Smutniak and the coach of the women's national volleyball team Julio Velasco, the referendum reached the goal of 500,000 signatures on September 25. The signatures, which finally reached the number of 637,487, were deposited by the promoters at the Supreme Court of Cassation on September 30. The question was declared compliant with the law by the Central Referendum Office on 12 December 2024 and declared admissible by the Constitutional Court on 20 January 2025, with a ruling filed on 7 February.
Questions
First question
- Card colour: Green
- Ballot:
- Title: Employment contract with increasing protections – regulation of unlawful dismissals: Repeal
- Description:
The question proposes to completely repeal the current legislation which prevents, in companies with more than 15 employees, the reinstatement of workers who have been dismissed unlawfully, if they were hired starting from 7 March 2015, even in the case in which the judge declares the interruption of the relationship unjust or unfounded; these employees are currently entitled exclusively to compensation ranging from 6 to 36 months of salary, in addition to unpaid wages and other contributions for the period between dismissal and the sentence. Reinstatement is expected only in cases of dismissals that are null or discriminatory.
These rules were introduced by Legislative Decree no. 23 of 2015, a part of the Jobs Act reform implemented by the Renzi government and later modified by various rulings of the Constitutional Court. If the referendum is approved, the previous rules would be reinstated, that is Article 18 of the Workers' Statute of 1970, later modified by the Fornero labour reform of 2012: in this way, the possibility of reinstatement in cases of unlawful dismissal would once again apply to all workers, but always within the limits set by the Fornero reform. As a result, compensation for individual dismissals would be limited to a range of 12 to 24 months of salary; instead, employees involved in collective dismissals (involving at least five people) judged to be unlawful would be reinstated.
Second question
- Card colour: Orange
- Ballot:
- Title: Small Businesses - Layoffs and related compensation: partial repeal
- Description:
Third question
- Card colour: Grey
- Ballot:
- Title: Partial repeal of provisions on the application of a term to subordinate employment contracts, maximum duration and conditions for extensions and renewals
- Description:
Fourth question
- Title: Exclusion of joint liability of the client, the contractor and the subcontractor for injuries suffered by the employee of a contracting or subcontracting company, as a consequence of the specific risks inherent in the activity of the contracting or subcontracting companies: Repeal
- Description:
Fifth question
- Card colour: Yellow
- Ballot:
- Title: Italian citizenship: Halving from 10 to 5 years of the time of legal residence in Italy of the non-EU adult foreigner for the request for the granting of Italian citizenship
- Description:
Questions dismissed
A further question concerning the total repeal of the Calderoli law on differentiated autonomy, supported by almost all the opposition parties to the Meloni Government and by various associations, had collected the necessary signatures to be filed with the Court of Cassation, as well as being formally requested by five regional councils (of Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Apulia, Sardinia and Tuscany). On 20 January 2025, the question was declared inadmissible by the Constitutional Court following its previous ruling no. 192/2024, which had declared many parts of the law unconstitutional, with the consequence of having made the object of the question objectively obscure – significantly reduced as a result of the aforementioned ruling – as well as lacking clarity as to its purpose. Precisely because of sentence no. 192/2024, a second question of partial repeal of the law requested by the same 5 regional councils had already been considered outdated by the Central Office for the Referendum of the Court of Cassation.
Positions
Main political parties
The following table lists all the positions taken by the political parties present in the Italian Parliament and European Parliament or associated with one of the committees promoting the questions.
Main trade unions
The following table lists all the positions, if any of the main Italian trade unions, whether or not they are associated with one of the committees promoting the questions.
Referendum committees
On 10 March 2025, the president of the citizenship referendum committee, Riccardo Magi, and his correspondent for the referendums on work, Maurizio Landini, announced that they would attend a meeting, held the following day, with the Secretary of the Council of Ministers, Alfredo Mantovano, and the Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, requesting the possibility of voting for students, workers and out-of-town patients, as well as the calling of a single election day for the referendum and administrative elections and adequate media coverage by the RAI networks and other broadcasters.
On 13 March, the Council of Ministers established that the referendums would be held on Sunday 8 and Monday 9 June of the same year, at the same time as the run-off round of the administrative elections, in contrast with the request of the promoters to make the date of the consultations coincide with the first round of the aforementioned elections. On the same occasion, the approval of a decree-law was announced which would have allowed voters who had been away from home for study, work or medical reasons for at least three months before the referendum to request to vote in a polling station other than their municipality of residence, by submitting an application by 5 May.
Civil society and organisations
On April 28, 2025, an appeal to vote in favor of all the referendums was published by forty prominent figures from research and academia, including Giorgio Parisi, Silvio Garattini, Donatella della Porta, Nadia Urbinati, Salvatore Settis, Marco Doria, Luigi Ferrajoli, and Maria Cecilia Guerra, a deputy. On May 10, another similar appeal was published, promoted by a group of workers affiliated with the SLC CGIL union in Milan and signed, among others, by Angela Finocchiaro, Paolo Fresu, Lella Costa, Lino Guanciale, Marina Massironi, Francesco Paolantoni, Serena Dandini, the Punkreas, Ricky Gianco, and Elio De Capitani.
Alessandro Barbero, Alfiero Grandi, and the FNSI have promoted a vote in favor of all the five questions, whereas Maurizio Ambrosini and the general director of Save the Children Italy, Daniela Fatarella, publicly supported only the referendum on citizenship. More generic appeals to vote, without specific endorsements, came from Geppi Cucciari, Marco Mengoni, Valeria Solarino, Michele Serra, Maurizio Crozza, Vera Gheno and Piero Pelù.