Roundup: Italian Senate approves electoral reform bill

The Italian Senate passed an electoral reform bill on Tuesday, seen as one of the major overhauls Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's cabinet vowed to implement.

The draft law was approved with 184 votes in favor and 66 votes against.

The reform aims to grant more political stability to the country, according to the cabinet.

Under the new electoral system, the party that receives the most votes in a ballot would be given a premium in terms of additional seats in parliament.

More specifically, the winning party would gain 340 of the 630 seats in the Lower House, as long as it reaches more than 40 percent of the votes. In case no party attains such a percentage in the first round, a run-off between the two most-voted parties or lists would follow and the winner would receive the premium.

The threshold to enter parliament would be set at 3 percent.

In a separate constitutional reform bill, the Italian parliament is discussing demoting the Senate into a non-elected assembly and stripping it off its current equal legislative status with the Lower House.

The electoral bill is considered a very relevant reform in Italy, which has long been plagued by a fragmented political system. Furthermore, the current electoral system was declared partially unconstitutional by Italy's Highest Court in December 2013, and it has been widely blamed for producing unclear majorities and, consequently, unstable cabinets.

The bill still needs to be approved by the Lower House to become law, with this final vote expected by April at the latest, Constitutional Reforms Minister Maria Elena Boschi recently said.

The definitive approval should come quite easily, since the coalition supporting the cabinet holds a stable majority in the Chamber of Deputies.

In fact, the Lower House had already passed the bill in March 2014, but the draft law was then substantially changed during Senate proceedings. Given Italy's "perfect bicameralism," which gives both chambers equal powers, the text has therefore to be discussed and voted again by deputies.

The new electoral system would not come into force before July 2016 as specified in a safeguard clause in the text, which resulted from a deal to revamp reforms struck by Renzi and centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi in November 2014.

After months of difficult talks, senators voted the electoral bill quite swiftly on Tuesday afternoon, as a new big challenge awaits Italy's politics.

All parties are involved in intense consultations since Tuesday in order to find a name to replace 89-year-old Giorgio Napolitano as president of the republic, who resigned on Jan 14.

The first round of voting to elect the new president will take place in a joint session of both houses of parliament on Thursday. Endit