There is no digital platform for referendums, +Europa protests: “It’s a boycott”

It will take at least 12 months before a secure platform for electronically signing referendum requests is in place. This is what was announced by the Minister of Justice, Carlo Nordio: the government has in fact decided that the existing platform, centered on the Spid system, will no longer have to be hinged to the Presidency of the Council but will be transferred to the Ministry of Justice.

The prospect of waiting at least a year, however, before the Italians can remotely sign up for the referendums, does not go down well with Riccardo Magi, of +Europa, who had been the inventor of a provisional solution in the last legislature and who had allowed thus the initiation of several referendums. “You are boycotting the political rights of citizens,” is Magi’s accusation.

Minister Guardasigilli explained that the platform in question will have to pass from Sogei, the state IT company headed by the Ministry of Economy, to the Ministry of Justice, but taking into account the remarks made a year ago by the Privacy Guarantor. And then the platform itself will have to be integrated with the Court of Cassation which has the task of examining the questions and supervising the signatures. All of this takes time. There will therefore be a mixed working group between Palazzo Chigi and the Ministry of Justice.

Nordio’s conclusions: “Once the parties have jointly certified the complete fulfillment of the activities envisaged by the agreement signed on 5 May, the platform will be transferred from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers to our ministry by signing a specific agreement, and only then the Ministry of Justice will be identified as manager of the platform pursuant to the aforementioned Dpcm of 9 September 2022″. «The prospect of having to wait another 12 months – Magi replied to him in Parliament – ​​is unacceptable. Two governments have already worked on the platform and it should have been ready by the end of last December”.

But beyond the technical aspects, there is a crucial political fact. Since the possible referendum questions for the following year must be filed with the Cassation by September, those on which the signatures of citizens should then be collected in support, this means that for a year there will be no referendum. The Meloni government will be able to navigate calmly. In fact, as we have seen in recent years, it is increasingly difficult for a proposing committee to collect the necessary signatures in the traditional way at banquets. “And if you make the constitutional reform – concluded Magi – for a possible suppressive referendum, do you want to force us to collect signatures in paper form?”.

The platform in question should have been ready as early as December 2021. “I remember – concludes Magi – that already, with a transitional procedure, Italian citizens have been able to sign referendums and the signatures have been deposited at the Central Office for the referendum at the Cassation . They were accepted and considered valid with a transitional procedure, prepared in a few weeks by the promoting committees in agreement with private companies».