The Politics of

Veneto Veneto (, ; vec, Vèneto ) or Venetia is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fourth in Italy. The region's capital is Venice while the biggest city is Verona. Veneto was part of the Roman Empire unt ...

, a

Region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics (physical geography), human impact characteristics (human geography), and the interaction of humanity and t ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

takes place in a framework of a

semi-presidential A semi-presidential republic, is a republic in which a president exists alongside a prime minister and a cabinet, with the latter two being responsible to the legislature of the state. It differs from a parliamentary republic in that it has a ...

representative democracy Representative democracy, also known as indirect democracy, is a type of democracy where elected people represent a group of people, in contrast to direct democracy. Nearly all modern Western-style democracies function as some type of represen ...

, whereby the

President President most commonly refers to: *President (corporate title) *President (education), a leader of a college or university *President (government title) President may also refer to: Automobiles * Nissan President, a 1966–2010 Japanese ful ...

is the

head of government The head of government is the highest or the second-highest official in the executive branch of a sovereign state, a federated state, or a self-governing colony, autonomous region, or other government who often presides over a cabinet, a gro ...

, and of a pluriform

multi-party system In political science, a multi-party system is a political system in which multiple political parties across the political spectrum run for national elections, and all have the capacity to gain control of government offices, separately or in coal ...

Executive power The Executive, also referred as the Executive branch or Executive power, is the term commonly used to describe that part of government which enforces the law, and has overall responsibility for the governance of a state. In political systems ba ...

is exercised by the

Regional Government Local government is a generic term for the lowest tiers of public administration within a particular sovereign state. This particular usage of the word government refers specifically to a level of administration that is both geographically-loca ...

Legislative power A legislature is an assembly with the authority to make laws for a political entity such as a country or city. They are often contrasted with the executive and judicial powers of government. Laws enacted by legislatures are usually known as p ...

is vested in both the government and the Regional Council. The

Statute of Veneto The Statute of the Region of Veneto is the constitution of Veneto, a Region of Italy. The current Statute was first passed by the Regional Council of Veneto on 18 October 2011 with unanimous decision and confirmed with a second approval by the co ...

was promulgated in 1971 and largely rewritten in 2011. Article 1 defines Veneto as an "autonomous Region", "constituted by the Venetian people and the lands of the provinces of Belluno, Padua, Rovigo, Treviso, Venice, Verona and Vicenza", while maintaining "bonds with Venetians in the world". Article 2 sets forth the principle of the "self-government of the Venetian people" and mandates the Region to "promote the historical identity of the Venetian people and civilisation". On 22 October 2017 an autonomy referendum took place in Veneto: 57.2% of Venetians participated and 98.1% voted "yes". The current president of Veneto is

Luca Zaia Luca Zaia (born 27 March 1968) is a Venetian and Venetist politician, who has been President of Veneto since 2010. Prior to that, Zaia was President of the Province of Treviso from 1998 to 2005, Vice President of Veneto from 2005 to 2008 and M ...

Liga Veneta Liga Veneta ( vec, Łiga Vèneta; en, Venetian League; abbr. LV), whose complete name is ( en, Venetian League for Salvini Premier), is a regionalist political party active in Veneto. The LV, whose ideology combines Venetian nationalism and su ...

– Lega, by far the largest party in the Regional Council.

Political history

Prior to the rise of

Fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

, most of the deputies elected in Veneto were part of the liberal establishment (see

Historical Right The Right group ( it, Destra), later called Historical Right ( it, Destra storica) by historians to distinguish it from the right-wing groups of the 20th century, was an Italian conservative parliamentary group during the second half of the 19th c ...

Historical Left The Left group ( it, Sinistra), later called Historical Left ( it, Sinistra storica) by historians to distinguish it from the left-wing groups of the 20th century, was a liberal and reformist parliamentary group in Italy during the second half of ...

and Liberals), which governed Italy for decades, but also the main opposition parties, namely the Radical Party and the

Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a socialist and later social-democratic political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the longest-living parties of the country. Founded in Genoa in 1892, ...

, had a good sway among Venetian voters. In the 1919 general election, the first held with

proportional representation Proportional representation (PR) refers to a type of electoral system under which subgroups of an electorate are reflected proportionately in the elected body. The concept applies mainly to geographical (e.g. states, regions) and political divis ...

, the

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

-inspired Italian People's Party came first with 42.6% (gaining at least 10% more than in any other region) and the Socialists were in second place with 36.2%. In the 1924 general election, which led Italy to dictatorship, Veneto was one of the few regions, along with

Lombardy Lombardy ( it, Lombardia, Lombard language, Lombard: ''Lombardia'' or ''Lumbardia' '') is an administrative regions of Italy, region of Italy that covers ; it is located in the northern-central part of the country and has a population of about 10 ...

and

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

, which did not return an absolute majority to the

National Fascist Party The National Fascist Party ( it, Partito Nazionale Fascista, PNF) was a political party in Italy, created by Benito Mussolini as the political expression of Italian Fascism and as a reorganization of the previous Italian Fasces of Combat. The ...

.Piergiorgio Corbetta; Maria Serena Piretti, ''Atlante storico-elettorale d'Italia'', Zanichelli,

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

2009 From

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

to 1994 Veneto was the heartland of

Christian Democracy Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

, which polled 60.5% in the 1953 general election and steadily above 50% until the late 1970s, and led the Regional Government from its establishment in 1970 to 1993. In the 1990s Veneto became a stronghold of the

centre-right Centre-right politics lean to the Right-wing politics, right of the Left–right politics, political spectrum, but are closer to the Centrism, centre. From the 1780s to the 1880s, there was a shift in the Western world of social class structure a ...

Pole Pole may refer to: Astronomy *Celestial pole, the projection of the planet Earth's axis of rotation onto the celestial sphere; also applies to the axis of rotation of other planets *Pole star, a visible star that is approximately aligned with the ...

House of Freedoms The House of Freedoms ( it, Casa delle Libertà, CdL) was a major centre-right political and electoral alliance in Italy, led by Silvio Berlusconi. History The CdL was the successor of the Pole of Freedoms/Pole of Good Government and the Pole fo ...

coalition, which governed the region from 1995 to 2010 under

Giancarlo Galan Giancarlo Galan (born 10 September 1956 in Padua) is an Italian politician. Political career After having been an activist of the Italian Liberal Party in the 1970s and the 1980s, he was not active in politics until he joined Forza Italia sin ...

Forza Italia Forza ItaliaThe name is not usually translated into English: ''forza'' is the second-person singular imperative of ''forzare'', in this case translating to "to compel" or "to press", and so means something like "Forward, Italy", "Come on, Ital ...

. In 2010 Galan was replaced by

–

Lega Nord Lega Nord (; acronym: LN), whose complete name is (), is a right-wing, federalist, populist and conservative political party in Italy. In the run-up of the 2018 general election, the party was rebranded as (), without changing its official n ...

, who obtained a hefty and record-breaking 60.2% of the vote and whose

coalition government A coalition government is a form of government in which political parties cooperate to form a government. The usual reason for such an arrangement is that no single party has achieved an absolute majority after an election, an atypical outcome in ...

included

The People of Freedom The People of Freedom ( it, Il Popolo della Libertà, PdL) was a centre-right political party in Italy. The PdL, launched by Silvio Berlusconi on 18 November 2007, was initially a federation of political parties, notably including Forza Italia a ...

and, since 2013, the

New Centre-Right New Centre-Right ( it, Nuovo Centrodestra, NCD) was a centre-right political party in Italy. The party was launched on 15 November 2013 by a group of dissidents of The People of Freedom (PdL) who opposed the party's transformation into Forza Ita ...

; Liga Veneta was the largest party with 35.2% of the vote. Zaia and Liga Veneta were confirmed in 2015, with a reduced but more cohesive majority, due to the split of

Tosi List for Veneto The Tosi List for Veneto ( it, Lista Tosi per il Veneto, LTV) was a centrist and regionalist political party in Veneto, Italy, named after its leader Flavio Tosi. The party emerged in March 2015 as a split from Liga Veneta– Lega Nord. Its mem ...

and the diminishment of Forza Italia: Zaia won 50.1% of the vote, while Liga Veneta a thumping 40.9%, largely ahead of the opposition

Democratic Party Democratic Party most often refers to: *Democratic Party (United States) Democratic Party and similar terms may also refer to: Active parties Africa *Botswana Democratic Party *Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea *Gabonese Democratic Party *Demo ...

's 20.5%. Veneto is home to

Venetian nationalism Venetian nationalism (also Venetism, from the Venetian/Italian name, ''venetismo'') is a nationalist, but primarily regionalist, political movement active mostly in Veneto, Italy, as well as in other parts of the former Republic of Venice. ...

(or Venetism), a political movement that appeared in the 1970s, demanding political and fiscal autonomy for the region (which is felt by Venetists to be a

nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by those ...

in its own right) and promoting Venetian culture,

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

and history. This was the background from which Liga Veneta emerged in 1980. In the 1990s and 2000s other Venetist parties (the

Union of the Venetian People The Union of the Venetian People (''Union del Popoło Vèneto'', UPV) was a Venetist political party active in Veneto. History The party was founded in 1987 by splinters from Liga Veneta led by Ettore Beggiato and Gianni Butturini. In the 1990 r ...

, the Veneto Autonomous Region Movement, Lega Autonomia Veneta,

Liga Veneta Repubblica Liga Veneta Repubblica (''Łiga Vèneta Republica'', Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party in Veneto, Italy. The party maintains a mildly separatist position and campaigns for the self-government of Veneto. The party's fo ...

North-East Project North-East Project ( it, Progetto NordEst, PNE) is a Venetist, fiscal federalist and libertarian Italian political party based in Veneto, demanding larger autonomy, if not complete independence for the region. History The party was founded ...

, etc.) emerged, but they never touched the popularity of Liga Veneta, which was a founding member of Lega Nord in 1991. Some Venetists have campaigned for federal reform and/or autonomy, others (notably including the

Venetian National Party The Venetian National Party (''Partito Nasionał Veneto'', PNV) was a Venetist, separatist and libertarian political party active in Veneto, Lombardy and Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In September 2010 the party suspended its activities and its member ...

, the

Party of the Venetians The Party of Venetians ( it, Partito dei Veneti, PdV) was a Venetist- separatist coalition of parties active in Veneto. The alliance, which was formed in January 2010, after the disbandment of Veneto Freedom, was composed of five groups, whic ...

Veneto State Veneto State (''Veneto Stato'', VS) was a Venetist political party active in Veneto and eastern Lombardy. The party's goal to achieve full political independence for the former territories of the Venetian Republic from Italy through a referendum ...

Venetian Independence Venetian Independence ( it, Indipendenza Veneta, vec, Independensa Vèneta, IV) is a Venetist, liberal and, to some extent, libertarian political party active in Veneto. The party seeks to achieve full political independence for the former terr ...

, Veneto First, ''

Plebiscito.eu ''Plebiscito.eu'', originally known as Plebiscite 2013 ( it, Plebiscito 2013, P2013), is a supposedly cross-party nonpartisan committee that campaigns for the independence of Veneto from Italy. Its main leaders have been Lodovico Pizzati, a former ...

'', Venetian Left,

Independence We Veneto Independence We Veneto ( it, Indipendenza Noi Veneto, INV) was a Venetist and separatist political party based in Veneto, Italy. INV, which was represented in the Regional Council of Veneto by Antonio Guadagnini from June 2015 to March 2016, is ...

and

We Are Veneto We Are Veneto (''Siamo Veneto'', SV) is a Venetian nationalist and separatist political party in Italy, based in Veneto. History The party was formed in March 2016 when Antonio Guadagnini, leader of Veneto State (VS) and member of the Regional C ...

) for outright

independence Independence is a condition of a person, nation, country, or state in which residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory. The opposite of independence is the statu ...

Executive branch

The Regional Government is led by the

President of Veneto The president of Veneto is the supreme authority of Veneto, a region of Italy. Election Originally appointed by the Regional Council of Veneto, since 1995 ''de facto'' and 2000 ''de jure'', the president is elected by popular vote every five year ...

and composed of the President and ten Ministers (''Assessori''), including a Vice President.

Current composition

The current regional government has been in office 16 October 2020, under the leadership of President

–

List of previous Governments

Legislative branch

The Regional Council of Veneto (''Consiglio Regionale del Veneto'') is composed of 51 members. 49 councillors are elected in

provincial Provincial may refer to: Government & Administration * Provincial capitals, an administrative sub-national capital of a country * Provincial city (disambiguation) * Provincial minister (disambiguation) * Provincial Secretary, a position in Can ...

constituencies by

using the

largest remainder method The largest remainder method (also known as Hare–Niemeyer method, Hamilton method or as Vinton's method) is one way of allocating seats proportionally for representative assemblies with party list voting systems. It contrasts with various h ...

with a

Droop quota The Droop quota is the quota most commonly used in elections held under the single transferable vote (STV) system. It is also sometimes used in elections held under the largest remainder method of party-list proportional representation (list PR). ...

and

open list Open list describes any variant of party-list proportional representation where voters have at least some influence on the order in which a party's candidates are elected. This is as opposed to closed list, which allows only active members, par ...

s, while the remaining two are the elected

and the candidate for President who comes second. The winning coalition wins a bonus of seats in order to make sure the elected President has a majority in the Council. The Council is elected for a five-year term, but, if the President suffers a vote of no confidence, resigns or dies, under the ''simul stabunt, simul cadent'' (literally: "they will stand together or they will fall together") clause introduced in 1999, also the Council is dissolved and a snap election is called.

Current composition

Local government

Provinces

is subdivided into seven

provinces A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outsi ...

, including

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

which has functioned as a

metropolitan city A metropolis () is a large city or conurbation which is a significant economic, political, and cultural center for a country or region, and an important hub for regional or international connections, commerce, and communications. A big ci ...

since 2015. All the seven provinces, but especially

Vicenza Vicenza ( , ; ) is a city in northeastern Italy. It is in the Veneto region at the northern base of the ''Monte Berico'', where it straddles the Bacchiglione River. Vicenza is approximately west of Venice and east of Milan. Vicenza is a th ...

Verona Verona ( , ; vec, Verona or ) is a city on the Adige River in Veneto, Northern Italy, Italy, with 258,031 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region. It is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and the ...

and

Padua Padua ( ; it, Padova ; vec, Pàdova) is a city and ''comune'' in Veneto, northern Italy. Padua is on the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice. It is the capital of the province of Padua. It is also the economic and communications hub of the ...

, were long

Christian Democratic Christian democracy (sometimes named Centrist democracy) is a political ideology that emerged in 19th-century Europe under the influence of Catholic social teaching and neo-Calvinism. It was conceived as a combination of modern democratic ...

heartlands. In the early 1990s, when the Venetian and Italian party systems experienced huge realignments,

Treviso Treviso ( , ; vec, Trevixo) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 84,669 inhabitants (as of September 2017). Some 3,000 live within the Veneti ...

, Vicenza and Verona became strongholds of

–

, while in Padua, the region's most populated,

was the dominant political force; only two provinces, Venice and

Rovigo Rovigo (, ; egl, Ruig) is a city and ''comune'' in the Veneto region of Northeast Italy, the capital of the eponymous province. Geography Rovigo stands on the low ground known as Polesine, by rail southwest of Venice and south-southwest of P ...

, have traditionally been the powerbases of the centre-left and, more recently, the

, while

Belluno Belluno (; lld, Belum; vec, Belùn) is a town and province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Located about north of Venice, Belluno is the capital of the province of Belluno and the most important city in the Eastern Dolomites region ...

is a swing province. In the 2015 regional election Liga Veneta came largely first in each and every province. Since 2014 provinces have lost many powers to the region and the municipalities, and, contextually, provincial presidents have been elected by mayors and municipal councillors, whose votes are weighted according to the population of their municipalities. In some cases, elected Presidents represent bipartisan or trans-party coalitions. For instance, Enoch Soranzo was elected in Padua thanks to the decisive support of the Democratic Party, while the majority of his party, Liga Veneta, had endorsed another candidate, and

Achille Variati Achille Variati (Vicenza, 19 January 1953) is an Italian politician and former Mayor of Vicenza. A long-time member of Christian Democracy, he was elected to the municipal council of Vicenza in 1980 and then re-elected in 1985 and 1990, when he ...

was endorsed both by the Democrats and Forza Italia in Vicenza. In 2015 the

Province of Venice The Province of Venice (''Provincia di Venezia'') was a province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Its capital was the city of Venice. It had an area of 2,467 km2, and a total population of 846,962 (2011). The province became the Met ...

was replaced by the

Metropolitan City of Venice The Metropolitan City of Venice ( it, Città Metropolitana di Venezia) is a metropolitan city in the Veneto region, Italy. Its capital is the city of Venice. It replaced the Province of Venice and includes the city of Venice and 43 other municipal ...

and the mayor of Venice,

Luigi Brugnaro Luigi Brugnaro (born 13 September 1961) is an Italian conservative politician and entrepreneur who has been the Mayor of Venice, since taking office on 15 June 2015. Since July 2021, he is also president of Coraggio Italia (CI), a centrist politi ...

, was sworn in as metropolitan mayor too.

Municipalities

Twenty-six ''

comuni The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces (''province''). The can also ...

'' of Veneto have more than 25,000 inhabitants. Eleven are controlled by

, five by the

, three by

and one by the

Brothers of Italy Brothers of Italy ( it, Fratelli d'Italia, FdI) is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Italy. It is led by Giorgia Meloni, the incumbent Prime Minister of Italy and the first woman to serve in the position. Accor ...

. Five mayors are non-party independents: two of these are supported by Liga Veneta, Forza Italia and the Brothers of Italy, two by the Democratic Party and the remaining one by a local nonpartisan coalition.

Political parties and elections

Latest regional election

The latest regional election took place on 20–21 September 2020.

– Lega was re-elected President by a landslide 76.8% of the vote, while his main rival

Arturo Lorenzoni Arturo is a Spanish and Italian variant of the name Arthur. People *Arturo Álvarez (footballer, born 1985), American-born Salvadoran footballer * Arturo Álvarez (footballer, born 1959), Mexican footballer *Arthuro Henrique Bernhardt (b. 1982), Br ...

stopped at 15.7%. Liga Veneta, which ran an official party list and a list named after Zaia, was confirmed the largest in the region with a combined 61.5% of the vote. The

came second with 11.9% and the

third with 9.6%. The total score of Venetist parties was 65.6%, the highest ever.

Latest general election in Veneto

The

centre-right coalition The centre-right coalition ( it, coalizione di centro-destra) is an alliance of political parties in Italy, active—under several forms and names—since 1994, when Silvio Berlusconi entered politics and formed his Forza Italia party. Despite ...

(56.3%), this time dominated by the

, obtained a far larger victory than four years before over the

centre-left coalition The centre-left coalition ( it, coalizione di centro-sinistra) is an political alliance, alliance of list of political parties in Italy, political parties in Italy active, under several forms and names, since 1995 when The Olive Tree (Italy), Th ...

(23.0%),

Action – Italia Viva Action – Italia Viva ( it, Azione – Italia Viva; A–IV), informally known as the Third Pole ( it, Terzo Polo), is a liberal, pro-Europeanist and centrist parliamentary group and electoral list which ran in the 2022 Italian general election. ...

(8.4%) and the

Five Star Movement The Five Star Movement ( it, Movimento 5 Stelle , M5S) is a political party in Italy. Its leader and president is Giuseppe Conte, Prime Minister of Italy from 2018 until 2021. The M5S was founded on 4 October 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a comedian an ...

(5.8%). One third of deputies and senators were elected in single-seat constituencies and, as in 2018, the centre-right won all such constituencies. Among parties, the Brothers of Italy came largely first with 32.7% of the vote, followed by the

(16.3%) and Lega (14.5%). The biggest turnaround happened within the centre-right, as Lega lost more than half of the votes obtained in 2018 (–17.7pp) and the Brothers of Italy jumped from 4.2% to virtually eight times that share (+28.5pp).

References

Sources

Veneto Region – Legislatures

Regional Council of Veneto – Elections

Cattaneo Institute – Archive of Election Data

Ministry of the Interior – Historical Archive of Elections

External links

Veneto Region

Regional Council of Veneto

Constitution of Veneto
{{Politics of Italian Regions Veneto