An Italian court on Tuesday declared that Silvio Berlusconi had completed his sentence for a tax-fraud conviction at his media empire.
The sentence means the three-time premier gets his passport back as a two-year office ban ends but a longer, six-year ban is still in force.
Despite this, his centre-right Forza Italia (FI) opposition party hailed the verdict as giving him more room to manoeuvre as he leads FI into local elections at the end of next month, trying to boost sagging poll ratings and heal internal rifts.
The Milan court said Berlusconi had officially served his conviction for tax fraud at his Mediaset business empire after doing 10 and a half months' community service at a home for sick elderly people.
In August 2013 the supreme court upheld a four-year prison term against Berlusconi, making it definitive. Three years of that sentence were covered by an amnesty. The 78-year-old billionaire served the rest of the sentence by doing community service one morning a week with Alzheimer's sufferers.
The social work ended in March after he won a 45-day discount - though he is still visiting his old charges because he says he enjoyed the job so much.
Berlusconi's having served his time for a tax-fraud conviction wipes out one two-year office ban for the former premier but not another, six-year ban caused by an 2012 anti-corruption law, judicial sources said Tuesday.
The three-time premier was ejected from the Senate in November 2013 on the basis of the anti-corruption law.
Berlusconi is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights against than ban, arguing it was applied retroactively in his case, which he says violates the Italian Constitution.
The anti-corruption law was adopted before the supreme court upheld the tax-fraud conviction, although the original sentence predates it.
Despite the bothersome lingering ban, due to expire in November 2019, many in FI found cause to rejoice at Tuesday's ruling.
Some FI members were frankly euphoric.
"We express our satisfaction for Silvio Berlusconi: now the president can return to the field definitively and continue to work to relaunch the centre-right," the Lazio regional FI caucus said in a statement. "Delight for president Berlusconi. (Premier Matteo) Renzi and the left can even start to tremble. The good times are over.
Forza Italia to win," said FI House whip Renato Brunetta in a post to his Twitter feed. "It is a magnificent piece of news, the first fundamental step towards a new season of victories," Campania FI regional coordinator Senator Domenico De Siano said.
"Our hope is that the European Court of Human Rights upholds the appeal against the legal distortions of the Severino law and restores full political conformity to our leader," he said.
Sources close to the former premier said Tuesday he was glad to be relatively free but still bitter about not being able to stand for election.
Berlusconi was said to be holding out high hopes for his appeal to Strasbourg.
While he is leading the fight for elections in thousands of towns and cities and many regions on May 31, Berlusconi will be trying to lift FI back above Matteo Salvini's newly ascendant Northern League on the conservative side of the political fence.
Salvini, who is allied with FI in most voting areas, has driven the League to new highs with anti-immigrant and anti-euro rhetoric.
Berlusconi is also bidding to fend off attempts by one-time-dauphin-turned-prime-dissident Raffaele Fitto to field his own candidates in several places, without the leader's seal of approval.
And Berlusconi still has other legal battles to fight as well.
His other cases include allegedly paying young women to commit perjury about the real nature of his "elegant" villa parties, allegedly bribing Senators to switch sides, allegedly paying a southern businessman to keep quiet about escorts brought to his Rome residence, and allegedly being involved in the publication of an illegally obtained wiretap.
He got a fillip last month, however, when Italy's top court upheld his appeals acquittal for paying an underage prostitute called Ruby for sex and springing her from a police station on the grounds she was Hosni Mubarak's niece.
At the time, Berlusconi said the truth had prevailed after the supreme Court of Cassation's ruling which paved the way for a "spring campaign" to revive his flagging political fortunes.
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