Italy is still waiting for its climate assembly

The story began in 2019. That year, a group of citizens brought the idea of a national citizens’ assembly to Parliament. It gave rise to the popular initiative “Cittadin3 per il Clima”. In December 2019, the bill was formally submitted to the Court of Cassation. Then the coronavirus pandemic struck. The collection of the 50,000 signatures required for a popular initiative could not properly begin until autumn 2021.

A sobering result

“We did what it is the duty of citizens to do when the state fails to respond,” Lorenzo Mineo, one of the initiators and coordinator of Politici per Caso, later told the Senate. They had tried to take the initiative themselves. The result, however, was sobering: around 2,500 people supported the popular initiative – only about one twentieth of the number required.

For Mineo, this was no reason to abandon the idea. Quite the opposite. Climate policy in particular, the initiators argued, exposed the limitations of conventional politics especially clearly. Interest groups had direct access to political decision-making processes, while ordinary citizens generally remained on the outside.

A citizens’ assembly to overcome political gridlock

Extinction Rebellion, which joined the initiative, framed the ambition in even more fundamental terms: citizens’ assemblies should give citizens “voice and power” so that they could have a say in decisions about their future. The climate crisis, it argued, was precisely the area in which such a process was particularly urgently needed.

The idea behind it is simple: a randomly selected group should reflect the population as closely as possible in miniature. Its members are given time to engage with an issue. They hear from a range of experts and interest groups, can ask questions and then deliberate with one another. Unlike politicians, they do not have to worry about re-election or represent a party line.

What randomly selected citizens can do

This is precisely where British political scientist Graham Smith, one of the best-known researchers on climate assemblies and chair of the Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies, sees one of their strengths. During preparations for Bologna’s climate assembly, he said of randomly selected citizens: “We are all capable of making useful recommendations.” The crucial point, he argued, was not merely to listen to those who already participate in political consultation processes, but to involve a meaningful cross-section of the population.

The Italian popular initiative failed to secure the required 50,000 signatures. But its initiators changed strategy. If the proposal could not reach Parliament from below, then Parliament itself would have to take it up.

From a popular initiative to a parliamentary initiative

In June 2022, Politici per Caso, Eumans, the Associazione Luca Coscioni and Extinction Rebellion presented the demand once again in the Senate. At the same time, a petition calling for a national citizens’ assembly on the climate and environmental crisis, the energy transition and sustainability reached Parliament. The initiators now specifically sought members of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate who were willing to turn their proposal into a parliamentary bill.

This marked the beginning of the idea’s second life. On 26 July 2023, former minister Maria Anna Madia of the Partito Democratico, together with members of other opposition parties, introduced Bill C.1337 in the Chamber of Deputies. It was also signed by Riccardo Magi, Giulia Pastorella, Lia Quartapelle and Luana Zanella. A few days later, Ivan Scalfarotto introduced a corresponding bill in the Senate.

“Places for reflection”

The failed popular initiative had thus been transformed into a cross-party parliamentary initiative.

When the proposal was presented jointly in December 2023, it became clear why politicians from different parties supported the idea. Ivan Scalfarotto of Italia Viva described citizens’ assemblies as “places for reflection, consideration and the reconciliation of opposing needs.” Luana Zanella of Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra saw them as a response to the widespread desire among people to “count for more” politically.

Complementing rather than replacing

Giulia Pastorella, meanwhile, emphasised what citizens’ assemblies were specifically not intended to be: a replacement for Parliament. “I believe that randomly selected citizens’ assemblies are not a substitute for participation, but a complement to it,” the MP said.

Lia Quartapelle of the Partito Democratico made a similar argument. Politics needed citizens and “their ability to understand how things work and to feel that they are part of the decisions being made”. Riccardo Magi of +Europa placed the proposal in an even broader context: the crisis of representative democracy, he argued, required institutional reforms that enabled new forms of deliberative participation.

The beginning of a political campaign

Marco Cappato, co-founder of the European citizens’ movement Eumans, explicitly did not want the presentation of the bill to be understood as the end of the process. “Today’s event is the beginning of a political campaign,” he said.

Yet it was precisely in the institution whose capacity for action the citizens’ assembly was supposed to improve that the idea itself became stuck.

A parliament that does not decide

On 18 December 2023, Bill C.1337 was assigned to the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies. It remains there to this day. As of September 2026, the official parliamentary documentation still states tersely: “non ancora iniziato l'esame” – examination has not yet begun.

The bill has therefore been waiting for almost three years even for its first substantive parliamentary consideration. Scalfarotto’s parallel bill in the Senate has likewise failed to make progress.

The irony of gridlock

There is a certain irony to this story. An instrument intended to help overcome political gridlock on difficult long-term issues has itself become trapped in political gridlock.

For the initiators, the climate crisis was always more than merely a suitable topic for a first experiment. They regarded it almost as a textbook example of the weaknesses of representative democracy.

Why climate in particular?

Climate policy requires decisions whose costs are often immediately visible while their benefits may not emerge for years or decades. Governments have to implement measures that may affect some groups more heavily than others. At the same time, economic interest groups wield considerable influence. Politicians, meanwhile, inevitably also have to think about the next election.

Citizens’ assemblies promise a different space for making such decisions. Australian political scientist Nicole Curato, one of the leading researchers in the field, puts the argument in more fundamental terms: given the complexity of environmental crises, we cannot afford to leave decisions solely “in the hands of experts, authorities and politicians.” Climate assemblies can bring together knowledge and lived social experience.

What impact actually means

At the same time, research cautions against excessive expectations. A citizens’ assembly does not automatically possess political power. What matters is what happens to its recommendations afterwards. Curato therefore points out that the impact of such processes should not be measured solely by how many recommendations are immediately turned into law. They can also change political debates, reveal new possibilities for action and strengthen society’s capacity for collective deliberation.

While the national bill remained stalled, something remarkable happened: the idea began to spread at other levels of government.

Meanwhile, Italy started from the bottom up

Bologna held its own climate citizens’ assembly in 2023. Other Italian cities and regions began experimenting with similar processes or incorporated the instrument into their participation structures. The national campaign had therefore remained politically unsuccessful, while the procedure it advocated was simultaneously spreading across Italy.

This also changes the starting point for the national debate. When the initiative began in 2019, its supporters could mainly point to France, the United Kingdom, Ireland or Belgium. Italy now has experiences of its own.

Learning from the experience of others

And Italy can learn from the mistakes made elsewhere. As early as 2022, Serena Uberti of the Sardines movement, which had joined the campaign, described this apparent delay as a potential advantage: Italy could examine the weaknesses revealed by previous citizens’ assemblies and learn from them. Above all, the questions needed to be specific enough to allow citizens to engage with them thoroughly.

Perhaps the most interesting misunderstanding surrounding the Italian proposal concerns its democratic radicalism. A randomly selected citizens’ assembly may initially sound like a competitor to an elected parliament. Its supporters argue precisely the opposite.

No revolution against parliament

“We are not threatening anyone, we do not want to replace anyone,” Uberti said in 2022. The aim was to complement democracy. A democracy that failed to evolve, she argued, risked becoming rigid.

Exactly the same view can be found a year later among the politicians who introduced the bill in Parliament. The citizens’ assembly is not supposed to pass laws. Its purpose is to enable as diverse a group of people as possible to engage intensively with a difficult question – and thereby do something for which there is often surprisingly little room in everyday political life.

An additional space for political reflection

This also explains Scalfarotto’s description of citizens’ assemblies as “places for reflection”. Their democratic value does not lie in randomly selected citizens displacing elected politicians. It lies in creating an additional space for political reflection between elections.

So far, the story of “Cittadin3 per il Clima” is therefore a story of failure – but of a strangely productive kind of failure.

Six years later, the idea is still waiting

Instead of the required 50,000 signatures, the popular initiative secured only around 2,500 supporters. The national climate citizens’ assembly never materialised. The parliamentary bill that emerged from the initiative has itself been waiting since December 2023 for its examination even to begin.

At the same time, something was achieved that cannot easily be measured by the number of signatures. A small civil-society initiative became a demand taken up by politicians from several parties. An idea that was still largely unfamiliar in Italy in 2019 became a process that Italian cities are now putting into practice.

Just get started

Perhaps this captures the initiative’s real significance better than the question of whether its bill will ever be passed.

When Mineo discussed the way forward in 2022 after the disappointing result of the signature campaign, he formulated a strikingly pragmatic strategy: citizens’ assemblies simply had to be held – initially wherever that was possible. Once people saw what happened in such processes, interest would follow.

To some extent, that is exactly what has happened.

Only the national climate citizens’ assembly with which it all began is still missing.