Senators for life in Italy ( it, senatori a vita) are members of the

Italian Senate The Senate of the Republic ( it, Senato della Repubblica), or simply the Senate ( it, Senato), is the upper house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Chamber of Deputies). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral s ...

who are either appointed, limited in number up to five, by the

Italian President The president of Italy, officially denoted as president of the Italian Republic ( it, Presidente della Repubblica Italiana) is the head of state of Italy. In that role, the president represents national unity, and guarantees that Italian poli ...

"for outstanding patriotic merits in the social, scientific, artistic or literary field" or are former presidents and thus senators for life ''

ex officio An ''ex officio'' member is a member of a body (notably a board, committee, council) who is part of it by virtue of holding another office. The term '' ex officio'' is Latin, meaning literally 'from the office', and the sense intended is 'by right ...

''. Every president of the Italian Republic has made at least one appointment of a senator for life, with the exception of Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (since in his term there were more than five). President

Giorgio Napolitano Giorgio Napolitano (; born 29 June 1925) is an Italian politician who served as president of Italy from 2006 to 2015, the first Italian president to be re-elected to the presidency. Due to his dominant position in Italian politics, some critics ...

appointed Professor

Mario Monti Mario Monti, (born 19 March 1943) is an Italian economist and academic who served as the Prime Minister of Italy from 2011 to 2013, leading a technocratic government in the wake of the Italian debt crisis. Monti served as a European Commi ...

on 9 November 2011 and conductor

Claudio Abbado Claudio Abbado (; 26 June 1933 – 20 January 2014) was an Italian conductor who was one of the leading conductors of his generation. He served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the London Symphony ...

, researcher

Elena Cattaneo Elena Cattaneo (; born 22 October 1962) is an Italian pharmacologist and co-founding director of the University of Milan's Center for Stem Cell Research. She is an internationally prominent Huntington's disease researcher and stem cell research ...

, architect

Renzo Piano Renzo Piano (; born 14 September 1937) is an Italian architect. His notable buildings include the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers, 1977), The Shard in London (2012), the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City (2 ...

and Nobel-laureate physicist

Carlo Rubbia Carlo Rubbia (born 31 March 1934) is an Italian particle physicist and inventor who shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984 with Simon van der Meer for work leading to the discovery of the W and Z particles at CERN. Early life and educatio ...

on 30 August 2013. The president who appointed the highest number of senators for life was Luigi Einaudi, who made eight appointments during his term. Senators for life are the only senators who can decide not to be part of any political group.

Limitations

The Italian Constitution provides that the President of the Republic may appoint up to five senators for life. Until 2020 it was debated whether five was intended to be the maximum overall number of senators for life, or if each President had the ability to appoint up to five senators regardless of how many had been appointed by their predecessor and were still living. Until 1984 the former interpretation enjoyed the support of a majority of scholars. In that year, however, President

Sandro Pertini Alessandro "Sandro" Pertini (; 25 September 1896 – 24 February 1990) was an Italian socialist politician who served as the president of Italy from 1978 to 1985. Early life Born in Stella (Province of Savona) as the son of a wealthy landown ...

applied the latter interpretation. Pertini's successors applied varying standards.

Oscar Luigi Scalfaro Oscar Luigi Scalfaro (; 9 September 1918 – 29 January 2012) was the president of Italy from 1992 to 1999. A member of Christian Democracy (DC), he became an independent politician after the DC's dissolution in 1992, and was close to the centr ...

appointed none, in deference to the stricter reading, while both

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (; 9 December 1920 – 16 September 2016) was an Italian politician and banker who was the prime minister of Italy from 1993 to 1994 and the president of Italy from 1999 to 2006. Biography Education Ciampi was born ...

and

appointed five each. Eventually, the 2020 constitutional reform ended the debate by establishing unambiguously a limit of five overall appointed senators.

List of senators for life

Gallery of current senators for life

Giorgio Napolitano senato.jpg,

(age ) Mario Monti datisenato 2011.jpg,

(age ) Elena Cattaneo datisenato 2018.jpg,

(age ) Renzo Piano senato.jpg,

(age ) Carlo Rubbia senato.jpg,

(age ) Liliana Segre (XVIII Legislatura Senato).jpg ,

Liliana Segre Liliana Segre (; born 10 September 1930) is an Italian Holocaust survivor, named senator for life by President Sergio Mattarella in 2018 for outstanding patriotic merits in the social field. Born in 1930 into a Milanese family of Jewish origi ...

(age )

External links

Senato.it: Senatori a vita
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