Founded 12 October 2016 Political position Centre | Ideology Centrism
Liberalism Chamber of Deputies 16 / 630 | |
Leader Giovanni Monchiero
(group president) | ||
Civics and Innovators (Italian: Civici e Innovatori, CI) is a centrist and liberal parliamentary group active in the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. Since its foundation in October 2016, it has been led by Giovanni Monchiero.
Contents
Background
The group, which was formed by dissidents from Civic Choice (SC) in October 2016, was actually not new. In fact, until then it had been the official group of the party, which was launched by Mario Monti in the run-up of the 2013 general election and had later suffered several splits (including Monti).
Most notably, in mid 2016 SC was divided on the prospect of forming a joint group with Denis Verdini's Liberal Popular Alliance (ALA), as proposed by new party leader Enrico Zanetti. In July, after that the majority of the party's deputies had come in opposition of an alliance with ALA, Zanetti led four deputies (later joined by a fifth) out of the parliamentary group. Contextually, Zanetti, who pretended to be still the leader of SC, started to organise a joint group with the ALA and others. The party's national board finally sided with Zanetti later that month, and the national assembly did the same in October, with 63 votes in favour and 39 against.
This caused the final break-up of the party and the formation of two different parliamentary groups.
Formation and early months
The SC group eventually changed name into "Civics and Innovators" on 12 October 2016. At the time, it counted 15 deputies and was led by Giovanni Monchiero. Later that month the group was joined by two more deputies (Ivan Catalano and Mara Mucci), who were both former members of the Five Star Movement.
In December 2016 the group was generally supportive of the government led by Paolo Gentiloni (Democratic Party), who replaced Matteo Renzi (also a Democrat) as Prime Minister. 12 deputies gave confidence to the cabinet, 4 deputies (Adriana Galgano, Salvatore Matarrese, Domenico Menorello and Mucci) were not present during the vote, and the remaining one (Pierpaolo Vargiu) voted against. In January 2017 deputy Mario Catania, a former minister of Agriculture, member of the Union of the Centre (UdC) and later of SC, left the group and joined the Democratic Centre (CD), consistently with his "progressive culture" and values. In February the group was briefly joined by Aniello Formisano, who had been elected for the CD in 2013 and would later join the left-wing Democrats and Progressives (DP).
As of February 2017, the political alignment of group members was however heterogeneous. While the group leadership was keen on an alliance with the Democrats and Antimo Cesaro was confirmed undersecretary of Culture by Gentiloni, an increasing number of deputies was turning against the government. For instance, in January Vargiu, who had been elected in representation of the centre-right Sardinian Reformers, and Matarrese, a former president of SC, participated in the founding convention of Direction Italy, a conservative party launched by Raffaele Fitto and built on the experience of the Conservatives and Reformists. Others (Gianfranco Librandi, Andrea Mazziotti and Stefano Dambruoso) took part, along with Mario Monti, Francesco Rutelli, Emma Bonino and her Radicals, Carlo Scognamiglio and The Liberals, to an Europeanist event organised by Benedetto Della Vedova (undersecretary of Foreign Affairs, former Radical and SC member) in February.