Renzi, Berlusconi reach partial deal on election law

(ANSA) - Rome, November 12 - Premier Matteo Renzi and Silvio Berlusconi, the leader of the opposition centre-right Forza Italia (FI) party, on Wednesday reached a partial agreement on amending their Nazereno pact for a new election law. Wednesday's meeting, which lasted only half an hour, had been billed as a do-or-die encounter as Renzi said the famous and controversial deal was creaking after the two leaders failed to agree on changes to the so-called Italicum bill last week.
    The Italicum is the result of a meeting in January, a month before Renzi became premier, at which the pair also agreed to an overhaul of Italy's slow, costly political machinery.
    "The structure of the deal is more solid than ever," read a joint statement released by FI and Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD). Earlier this week Renzi reached a deal with the junior partners in his ruling coalition to modify the Italicum, which has cleared the Lower House.
    FI is not in favour of several of those changes, but Wednesday's statement said this will not prevent the revised Italicum being approved in the Senate by the end of the year. Renzi wants to make the 15% winner's bonus apply to the party that comes first, rather than the coalition, and raise the percentage of votes needed to gain it from 37% to 40%.
    The aim of the bonus is to ensure that the winner of elections actually has a working majority in parliament.
    Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD) won over 40% of the vote in May's European elections.
    There would be a run-off vote for the bonus seats if no coalition reaches the threshold.
    Wednesday's statement said Berlusconi had agreed to raise the bonus threshold to 40%, but it added that differences remain over whether the bonus should apply to parties or coalitions.
    Berlusconi and Renzi also remain divided over the vote threshold for parties to be able to have representatives in parliament.
    Under the original Italicum, the thresholds are 4.5% for parties within a coalition and 8% for parties that run alone, while a coalition needs to account for 12% of the overall vote to be considered such.
    But at this week's meeting with the small parties in his coalition, Renzi agreed to bring the entry threshold down to 3%.
    On Wednesday Berlusconi and Renzi did agree to give voters the opportunity to express preferences about which candidates on any give party list should represent them in parliament, although the parties would still be able to decide the first candidate to be elected in 100 constituencies.
    The current system of so-called blocked party lists has been blamed from distancing people from their parliamentarians.
    The two leaders also agreed that there should be no new elections until the end of the current parliamentary term in 2018. "This parliamentary term, which must continue until its natural end in 2018, is a great opportunity to modernize Italy," the joint statement read.
    There had been media speculation that Berlusconi feared Renzi was in a rush to pass a new election law so he could call snap elections and capitalise on his current popularity in the polls.
    The Italicum is intended to replace the dysfunctional system that contributed to the inconclusive outcome to last year's general election and was subsequently declared unconstitutional.