In Italy it will be forbidden in the future, under threat of high prison terms and fines, to organize rave parties or other music events without permission. On Friday, after a sometimes tumultuous session, parliament passed the law pushed by the right-wing government after the chamber president ended the discussion in a historic action. President Sergio Mattarella signed the law in the evening. Event organizers face imprisonment of three to ten years and fines of up to 10,000 euros.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government said it intended to use the law to crack down on illegal events where drugs were traded and public safety was endangered. In Italy, there are always techno raves in empty buildings, sometimes attended by thousands of people.
Critics protested violently that the right-wing majority in parliament linked the law to measures to deal with Corona, for example. Doctors and medical staff who refuse a Covid vaccination are allowed by law to go back to work. Under the previous government, those who opposed or refused vaccination were no longer allowed to work in the medical sector. Meloni had already changed this by decree at the beginning of November; now it is also law.
For the opposition, this is the wrong sign, especially these days, when there is heated debate about the number of corona cases in China and how to deal with passengers from the Asian country.
The opposition parties tried to prevent the law from being passed in a session that lasted around 20 hours in the House of Representatives – the larger of the two chambers of Parliament. Chamber President Lorenzo Fontana from the right-wing Lega then abruptly stopped the requests to speak and prompted an immediate vote. This procedure is called “guillotine” and has only been used once in the history of the republic in the House of Representatives. In the end, 183 MPs voted in favor of the law and 116 opposed it.
