What Meloni Actually Wanted to Change - And Why the Voters Said No

On March 22-23, 2026, Italian voters rejected a constitutional amendment that would have restructured the country's judiciary. Approximately 53.5 percent voted against the reform, according to data from the Italian Interior Ministry. Turnout exceeded 58 percent. Both chambers of parliament had previously approved the amendment, but voters used the confirmatory referendum to block it.

Most international coverage of this vote has focused on what it means for Giorgia Meloni's political future. This article focuses on something different: what the reform actually contained, what it would have changed in practice, and why it mattered enough to trigger a national vote.

What We Know

The count shows a clear majority against the reform. Constitutional referenda in Italy carry no quorum requirement under Article 138 of the Constitution. The result is legally binding regardless of how many voters participated. This distinguishes the vote from Italy's more common abrogative referenda, which require turnout above 50 percent to be valid.

The amendment passed both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate in two readings each, as Article 138 requires, with at least three months between the votes. It achieved an absolute majority in the second reading but fell short of the two-thirds threshold in both chambers. That shortfall opened the door to a confirmatory referendum. Opposition parties requested it. The vote proceeded.

The No side prevailed. The constitutional text remains unchanged.

What the Reform Proposed

The amendment contained four interlocking changes to Italy's judicial architecture.

The first and most discussed was the separazione delle carriere, the separation of career paths between judges and prosecutors. Under the current system, Italian magistrates belong to a single professional body, the ordine giudiziario. A prosecutor can, with restrictions, transfer to a judicial role during their career, and vice versa, though in practice few do so. The reform would have ended this mobility entirely, creating two permanently distinct professional tracks with separate entry competitions.

The second change targeted the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, the self-governing body of the judiciary known as the CSM. The reform would have replaced the single CSM with two separate councils: one for judges (the judging magistracy) and one for prosecutors (the prosecuting magistracy). Each would have governed career advancement and assignments for its respective branch, with both remaining under the presidency of the head of state.

The third change concerned the composition of these new councils. Italy's current CSM includes togati, members elected by magistrates themselves, and laici, lay members elected by parliament. The reform proposed introducing a sorteggio element, a lottery mechanism, for selecting council members. Togati would have been drawn by lot from eligible magistrates, and laici would have been drawn by lot from lists compiled by parliament. Proponents said this would weaken the factional politics that have plagued CSM elections. Critics said it would dilute expertise and democratic accountability.

The fourth change was the creation of an Alta Corte Disciplinare, a High Disciplinary Court. This new body, separate from both councils, would have handled all disciplinary proceedings against magistrates. It would have consisted of 15 members: three appointed by the President of the Republic, three drawn by lot from parliamentary lists, and nine magistrates drawn by lot from those with at least 20 years of service. Currently, the CSM handles disciplinary matters for all magistrates. The new court would have centralized this function in an independent body.

These four elements were presented as a package. They could not be voted on separately.

How the Current System Works

Italy's judicial architecture is unlike that of any other major Western European democracy, and the differences matter for understanding what was at stake.

The CSM sits at the center of the system. Established by the 1948 Constitution, it governs the careers of all magistrates, both judges and prosecutors. The President of the Republic chairs it ex officio. The First President of the Court of Cassation and the Prosecutor General serve as additional ex officio members. Sixteen togati are elected by the magistrates themselves, and eight laici are elected by parliament in joint session. The body handles promotions, transfers, and disciplinary proceedings for all magistrates. It is, in effect, the human resources department of the judiciary with constitutional rank.

The unified career path means that the prosecutor who investigates a case and the judge who might hear a similar case share the same professional culture, the same training, the same governing body. In France, prosecutors answer to the Ministry of Justice. In Germany, judges and prosecutors follow separate career structures from the start. In Italy, they are part of the same body, and the Constitution grants prosecutors the same independence guarantees it gives to judges.

This independence has a further dimension. Article 112 of the Constitution establishes the principle of obbligatorieta dell'azione penale: mandatory prosecution. Italian prosecutors are constitutionally required to pursue any case where credible evidence exists. They cannot be instructed by the government to drop or prioritize cases. This provision has shaped Italian politics profoundly since 1992, when the Mani Pulite investigation used this prosecutorial independence to dismantle the post-war party system in what became known as Tangentopoli.

The Associazione Nazionale Magistrati, Italy's national magistrate association, represents the vast majority of active magistrates. It is organized into internal factions that compete for CSM seats in elections that function much like party primaries. The main factions include Magistratura Indipendente on the conservative side, Area on the center-left, Unicost in the moderate center, and Magistratura Democratica on the progressive left. In the most recent ANM elections in January 2025, Magistratura Indipendente emerged as the largest faction. These factions have real power: they negotiate appointments and shape judicial policy from within.

Who Supported the Reform

The governing coalition backed the amendment through parliament. Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia, Matteo Salvini's Lega, and Antonio Tajani's Forza Italia all voted in favor. For Forza Italia, the party founded by Silvio Berlusconi, separazione delle carriere had been a core demand since the 1990s, when Berlusconi's conflicts with prosecutors turned judicial reform into a central plank of center-right politics.

The government framed the reform in institutional rather than partisan terms. Minister of Justice Carlo Nordio, a former prosecutor himself, presented the career separation as an alignment with European norms. In most EU member states, judges and prosecutors do not share a career path. The government also cited the Palamara scandal of 2019, when leaked communications revealed that CSM appointments were being traded among magistrate factions in exchanges with politicians. The scandal led to the expulsion of Luca Palamara from the magistracy and the ANM, and it handed reform advocates a powerful argument: the system of judicial self-governance was corrupt and needed restructuring.

Some legal scholars supported the reform on design grounds, separate from partisan considerations. They argued that the unified career created at least the appearance of institutional proximity between those who prosecute and those who judge, even if individual magistrates rarely switched roles in practice.

Who Opposed the Reform

The ANM declared the reform an attack on judicial independence. Its position rested on the argument that splitting the CSM would weaken collective self-governance and make prosecutors more vulnerable to political pressure. If prosecutors had their own smaller council, that body would have fewer resources, less institutional weight, and potentially more exposure to parliamentary influence through the selection of laici.

The political opposition campaigned for a No vote. Elly Schlein's PD and Giuseppe Conte's M5S, despite their own differences, found common ground in opposing the amendment. Smaller parties including the Greens and Sinistra Italiana joined the No coalition. For the political left, the reform carried the weight of three decades of right-wing attempts to rein in prosecutorial power, from Berlusconi's immunity laws to Meloni's structural overhaul.

Constitutional law scholars raised specific objections. The lottery mechanism, they argued, could produce council members with no relevant experience. The creation of two smaller councils would fragment judicial governance without solving the underlying problems of factionalism. Some warned that a separate prosecutorial council, composed partly of members selected by parliament, could create a pathway to political control over prosecution, the outcome that the current system was designed to prevent.

The opposition parties requested the confirmatory referendum after the amendment passed without two-thirds support. They calculated that public opinion would not endorse a reform perceived as weakening checks on political power.

The Referendum Mechanism

Article 138 of the Italian Constitution sets out a deliberately difficult process for constitutional amendments. A bill must pass both chambers twice, with a minimum interval of three months between readings. If the second reading achieves a two-thirds majority in both chambers, the amendment takes effect without further steps. If the majority is absolute but below two-thirds, the amendment is published and sits in a waiting period during which one-fifth of the members of either chamber, 500,000 voters, or five regional councils can request a confirmatory referendum.

This mechanism was designed by the framers of the 1948 Constitution to prevent hasty changes while still allowing democratic override. The absence of a quorum for constitutional referenda is a deliberate choice: it ensures that voters who show up determine the outcome. This contrasts with abrogative referenda under Article 75, where a participation threshold of 50 percent plus one means that organized abstention can defeat a proposal.

Italy has held five constitutional referenda. In 2001, voters approved a reform expanding regional autonomy with 64 percent in favor, though turnout was only 34 percent. In 2006, voters rejected Berlusconi's sweeping constitutional overhaul with 61 percent voting No at 52 percent turnout. In 2016, voters rejected Matteo Renzi's institutional reform with 59 percent voting No at 65 percent turnout. Renzi resigned within days. In 2020, voters approved a reduction in the size of parliament with nearly 70 percent in favor at 51 percent turnout. In 2026, voters rejected Meloni's judicial reform. The pattern for ambitious structural reforms proposed by sitting governments is consistent: they tend to fail at the ballot box. The 2020 vote, which reduced the number of parliamentarians, succeeded in part because it had broad cross-party support.

The Meloni government could have avoided this referendum by building a broader parliamentary coalition. Reaching two-thirds in both chambers would have required support from at least some opposition parties. The government chose not to pursue that path.

What We Do Not Know

Several questions remain open at the time of writing.

Final certified results have not been officially published. The figures cited in this article are based on near-complete counts. The final margin may shift marginally, though the direction of the outcome is settled.

Regional breakdowns of the vote are not yet fully available. Whether the traditional North-South divide in Italian voting patterns held in this referendum, and how urban and rural areas diverged, will become clear in the coming days.

Whether the government will attempt to pass elements of the reform through ordinary legislation remains unclear. Some aspects of career separation could theoretically be implemented without constitutional change, though the structural reforms to the CSM cannot.

How the defeat affects Italy's commitments under the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, the EU Recovery Fund plan, is also unresolved. The PNRR requires judicial efficiency reforms, but these are primarily procedural, covering digitalization, staffing, and case management rather than constitutional architecture. The two reform tracks are distinct, though politically they have become entangled.

What Circulates Falsely

Several claims in the public debate require correction.

The claim that the reform would have abolished judicial independence is false. The amendment restructured the governance of the judiciary but did not alter the constitutional provisions guaranteeing judicial independence. Articles 101 through 113 of the Constitution, which establish the autonomy and independence of the magistracy, were not part of the amendment text. Critics of the reform argued, with some basis, that the structural changes could weaken independence in practice over time. That is an assessment, not a fact.

The claim that the referendum is invalid because of low turnout is false. Article 138 explicitly provides for a confirmatory referendum without a quorum requirement. This is settled constitutional law, not a matter of interpretation.

The claim that this reform was identical to what Berlusconi proposed is misleading. Berlusconi's various proposals focused primarily on personal immunity and limiting prosecutorial reach. His Lodo Alfano and Lodo Schifani sought to shield sitting officials from prosecution, and both were struck down by the Constitutional Court. Meloni's reform targeted the career structure and governance architecture. The overlap exists in the demand for separazione delle carriere, which has been a center-right platform position for decades, but the specific mechanisms and scope differed substantially.

The claim that Italy's judiciary will now remain unreformed is misleading. The PNRR-related reforms, including the authorization of up to 16,500 Ufficio del Processo support staff positions, court digitalization programs, and process streamlining measures, are independent of the constitutional amendment and continue regardless of the referendum outcome. The constitutional reform addressed structural questions of judicial governance. The PNRR reforms address operational efficiency. The No vote blocked the former. It did not affect the latter.

What Remains

The vote settled a constitutional question. Italy's judicial career structure will remain unified. The CSM will continue to govern both judges and prosecutors as a single body. The factional dynamics within the magistracy that the Palamara scandal exposed will persist under the same institutional framework.

What the vote did not settle is whether that framework serves Italy well. The tensions that produced the reform, between a political class that views prosecutorial independence as unaccountable power and a judiciary that views structural reform as a threat to constitutional safeguards, remain as sharp as before the vote. The underlying problems in Italy's court system, including case backlogs that rank among the longest in the EU, continue.

The question of judicial governance in Italy has been asked repeatedly over three decades. The voters have now answered the specific version Meloni posed. The question itself will return.