WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, UCADI, #205 - Justice Referendum 2026: Asking Citizens What the Legislature Should Do (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 The justice referendum scheduled for March presents citizens with five questions, but leaves out a crucial one: "Do you want to replace the legislature in reforming the judiciary?" Indeed, although formally "justice" is a matter subject to referendum, substantively it involves extremely delicate procedural balances and produces effects that are difficult to predict. This assessment requires technical, legal, and even statistical expertise, beyond the knowledge of the average citizen. This is not a simplification of democratic debate, but rather an improper request for judgments on purely disciplinary issues.

It has been clarified from many quarters that the eventual approval of the questions will not impact either the rules of civil or criminal proceedings, and will not result in any reduction in the processing time of justice. Thus, the most immediately understandable and sensitive issue for public opinion: the efficiency of the judicial system, is also lost.
Nevertheless, voters are expected to understand the structure, functions, and operating mechanisms of the Superior Council of the Judiciary and even be able to formulate forecasts on the role of associative currents after the reform. Furthermore, citizens should know that the CSM evaluates the professionalism and competence of magistrates based on their opinions of the territorial judicial councils, bodies in which decision-making power is reserved exclusively to the magistrates themselves. As if that weren't enough, voters are called upon to undertake a further task: equipping themselves with tools to measure the performance of the judiciary. They should thus determine whether the current evaluation system is reliable or ineffective. And if they have doubts about the system's transparency, they should also be able to predict the effects of a different evaluation structure resulting from the entry of external stakeholders. This exercise requires skills far beyond those normally required of those voting in a referendum. Equally complex is the question of the separation of careers between judging and prosecuting magistrates. This distinction is far from intuitive and presupposes knowledge of the current rules, including those introduced by the Cartabia reform. This reform already limits changes in function to only once in a career. Here too, familiarity with statistical data is required-in 2024, changes in function affected just over 0.4% of magistrates-to understand the proposal's true impact on the administration of justice. The question regarding Limits to pre-trial detention, seemingly the simplest, actually raise numerous questions for those unfamiliar with criminal proceedings: what is pre-trial detention, when is it applied, and how long does it last? This issue is expected to capture public attention, as it is linked to prison overcrowding, unjust detention, and the economic costs borne by the community. The fifth question, on the abolition of the 2012 Severino Decree, is certainly the clearest in its formulation, but no less complex in its implications. It touches on the highly sensitive issue of preventing and repressing corruption, one of the most serious forms of violation of the law, because it directly affects public administration. According to the Corruption Perceptions Index 2024, Italy ranks 52nd globally and 19th among the 27 countries of the European Union. In 2025, corruption cases doubled compared to the previous year; Libera's dossier "Italy under bribes" records, As of December 1, 2025, there were 96 investigations and 1,028 people under investigation. Even if citizens aren't familiar with these figures in detail, the perception of corruption in the country is high. Yet, voters should know that they're not actually addressing the original text of the Severino Law, already amended by the Cartabia reform in 2023, but rather a further weakened formulation that allows
those who have plea bargained sentences of up to two years to run for office. Establishing the concrete effects of the abolition of the Severino Law is far from simple, especially given that, looking at the data, Italy's position in international indices has remained essentially unchanged in recent years. Finally, there remains a significant aspect: the very formulation of the referendum questions, which appears to be constructed more for insiders than for an electorate called upon to consciously exercise its sovereignty. In this scenario, the risk lies not only in an uninformed vote, but also in a progressive disconnect between the instruments of direct democracy and the citizens' genuine ability to understand their significance. In this instance, the Constitutional Court, in examining the referendum questions, has proven itself-to say the least-superficial. It has underestimated the actual comprehensibility of the questions. It has failed to consider the information asymmetry existing between legislators and ordinary citizens, nor has it assessed the actual suitability of the referendum instrument to produce a truly informed decision. The issue, therefore, is not this referendum, but rather the model of democracy that is becoming standardized in our country. Forms of direct democracy are increasingly being used for decisions that, by their very nature-complexity of the subject matter, asymmetric information, tactical political use, polarizing slogans-make informed choice nearly impossible. Citizens do not vote on the merits of reform, but rather aim to support the governing majority or minority, thus encouraging direct participation as a mere exercise of power. The consequences are serious: the hollowing out of participatory processes, the weakening of social cohesion, the commodification of politics, and growing distrust of institutions, with direct repercussions on democratic stability. Without a return to the ethical dimension of politics and the rebuilding of social bonds, the tools of direct democracy will continue to be weapons of distraction or simple exercises of top-down power.

Sabrina Barresi

https://www.ucadi.org/2026/03/01/referendum-giustizia-2026-chiede-al-cittadino-cio-che-spetta-al-legislatore/
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Link: (en) Italy, UCADI, #205 - Justice Referendum 2026: Asking Citizens What the Legislature Should Do (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca