Democratic Party (Italy)
The Democratic Party ( Partito Democratico Italian, short PD) is the strongest political party in the Italian center-left political spectrum.
Founded as a collective party of Italian center-left camp
The PD was established on 14 October 2007 as a merger of the party national leadership Sinistra ( DS) ( 1991 of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) had emerged ) and the party of La Margherita - a successor party to the former Christian Democrat government party Christian Democrats. The final merger of the two parties was preceded by a more than ten-year metamorphosis of the Italian center-left camp. The parties to this political spectrum had ( but not to a single party ) together several times to changing electoral alliances. This electoral alliances have included not only the national leadership of the Left and La Margherita also alternately various small parties. Under the leadership of Economics professor and later EU Commission President Romano Prodi such center-left alliances could win Silvio Berlusconi and assume governmental responsibility in the wake of two parliamentary elections against the center-right block. 1996 won the Alliance under the name l' Ulivo, 2006, under different composition than L' Unione. The final merger of Democratic Left and La Margherita joined in 2007 as seven other small groupings of the Italian political spectrum to: Movimento Repubblicani Europei, Partito Democratico Meridional, Progetto Sardegna, National Alliance dei Riformisti, Italia di Mezzo, Socialisti liberalization per il Partito Democratico, and Repubblicani Democratici.
75.8: As the first Chairman ( Segretario ) the party of the Rome's mayor Walter Veltroni of in a ballot among the Italian population ( 3.5 million investment, according to the organizers ) was (formerly DS) elected on October 14, 2007 Rosy Bindi % against (12.9%), Enrico Letta was (11.1%) and three other candidates prevail. The official founding meeting ( Assemblea Costituente ) finally chose on 27 October 2007 in Milan Romano Prodi in the representative office of party president (Presidente ) and Dario Franceschini as deputy party chairman. Also at the regional and provincial governing bodies of the party were first determined by base Elections ( primarie ) in November and December 2007.
Electoral defeat in the parliamentary and regional elections in 2008 and 2009
After Romano Prodi had lost as Acting Prime Minister his parliamentary majority in January 2008, it came in April 2008 to early parliamentary elections, which took the Partito Democratico with Walter Veltroni as the leading candidate. The extended center- left coalition formed thereby Italia dei Valori party and candidate of the Radical Party, which stood as a candidate on the list of PD. The parties of the extreme left were gathering in this election, however, under the alliance symbol La Sinistra - L' Arcobaleno, but did not manage to enter parliament. The coalition of the PD was able to unite only 37.5 % of the vote, not least due to the exclusion of the extreme left; the PD came alone to 33.2 %, while Silvio Berlusconi's coalition with a clear majority emerged as the winner of the elections.
Also in the regional elections in Friuli- Venezia Giulia, the Democratic Party had to take a sensitive election defeat in the same year and give the Office of the Regional President Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà. This was followed by further defeats in regional elections in the Abruzzo region in December 2008, as well as in the regional elections in February 2009 in Sardinia, whereupon Walter Veltroni announced his resignation as party leader. Veltroni's former deputy Dario Franceschini took over in the wake interim basis the party's leadership.
In opposition to the government Berlusconi IV and supporting the transitional government Monti
On 25 October 2009, the PD took again the mode of the ballot to the election of a new party leadership, with the former Minister of the Prodi government, Pier Luigi Bersani, among the approximately 3 million voters sat by an absolute majority. At the same time led Bersani's choice to first internal divisiveness, which, inter alia, the former Margherita exponent Francesco Rutelli from the PD and withdrew under the name National Alliance called a new center -oriented small party to life per l' Italia. Under the leadership Bersani, however, the PD also sought increased contact with those centrist parties that had emerged during the current term of the coalition government to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. After the final collapse of the fourth Berlusconiregierung in November 2011, the PD supported the technocrats short formed under Mario Monti to while preparing for upcoming elections.
Modest success in the 2013 parliamentary elections and grand coalition under Letta
In December 2012, Pier Luigi Bersani was again based on elections (this time on the nomination of the top candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections) against internal party opposition candidate prevail (especially against the young hopefuls Matteo Renzi ). Bersani led the PD in a nearly three-month campaign at the hastily called parliamentary elections of February 2013.
On election weekend of the PD was able to obtain an absolute majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a relative majority in the Senate, in alliance with the Left Sinistra Ecologia Libertà grouping; the party remained at around 25 % of the vote but behind their results from 2008 and the positive election predictions back who had Bersani previously predicted a sure victory. Especially the young protest movement Movimento 5 Stelle had been able to poach former PD voters successfully.
In the subsequent two months Bersani consultations to form a government were unsuccessful. As it the PD finally failed in April 2013, at the election of the president for two candidates from their own camp ( Franco Marini, then Romano Prodi ) to ensure the required majority of votes in the crucial vote, Bersani announced his resignation as party chairman to. On May 11, 2013, the delegates of the congress elected with 85.8 percent of the CGIL union Guglielmo Epifani as interim party leader. In December 2013 finally was the announced internal party ballot, in which the mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, was able to prevail among some three million eligible participants with 68 % of votes.
The re-election of Giorgio Napolitano for a second term as president ( as a compromise candidate of PD and PdL ) had already paved the way for the formation of a grand coalition between the PD and Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà in April 2013 after two months of coalition negotiations, the PD exponent Enrico Letta was designated as Prime Minister (see cabinet Letta ). In the Italian political culture a similarly broad coalition variant has only twice, in pronounced crisis, applied: in the immediate ( post-) war years from 1943 to 1947 and a historic compromise against the right - as left-wing terrorist activities in the 1970s.
The PD at the international level
European Parliament: The original founding parties of the PD belonged to at the EU level different European parties: While the Margherita part of the centrist European Democratic Party (EDP ), was among the Democrats of the Left of the Party of European Socialists (PES ) to. The membership of the PD to one of these European parties was therefore party internally initially controversial. In December 2008, Walter Veltroni finally announced that the PD not join the SPE, but will work closely with her. In the European elections of 2009, the PD came to 26.13% and joined then but the PES Group, which renamed itself for this purpose in Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament (S & D). On March 1, 2014, the PD finally joined the SPE, the appointment of Martin Schulz Party top candidate for the 2014 European elections, at.
International: Since 2013, the PD member of the global network Progressive Alliance, a party combination that was founded on authoritative initiative of the German SPD. The founding of the Progressive Alliance is accompanied by a withdrawal of European social democratic parties of the Socialist International (SI). Significant founding members are the American Democratic Party Apart from the PD, the Indian National Congress, the British Labour Party and the Social Democratic Party of Austria.
Significant representatives
- Pier Luigi Bersani
- Rosy Bindi
- Massimo D' Alema
- Dario Franceschini
- Enrico Letta
- Giorgio Napolitano
- Romano Prodi
- Matteo Renzi
- Francesco Rutelli
- Walter Veltroni