I’m publishing a letter from Italia dei Valori’s Silvana Mura on the proposed law: "Make space for young people in politics".

"Dear Antonio,

Unfortunately Italian politics is suffering from a historic surfeit of geriatrics that does not leave space for young people and doesn’t allow them to use their talents and their enthusiasm at the service of the country.

While in the rest of Europe, Aznar, Zapatero, Blair, Cameron and many others have become great national leaders at 30 or 40 years, with us however, we have to be happy to consider 50 year olds with graying hair as relatively young. Young people of merit have to wait to be transformed into late political developers before being able to hope to be at the head of a party or with a government position.

I’ve done some research and discovered that the average age, calculated from 1945 to the present day, when one becomes Premier for the first time in Italy is 55 years. But the surprising thing is that the age goes up to 60 if we are just looking at the governments of the Second Republic.

Another example shows that in the Lower House, only 1 deputy in 630 is younger than 30 years old, while the deputies who are younger than 50 are only 16%.

It is to change this situation that I have presented two proposed laws called “Make space for young people in politics” whose main points are:

1) Age limit of 70 years. Once you are older than this you can’t have any elected position (Deputy, Senator, Mayor, President of the Province, President of the Region, Councillor at a local, provincial or regional level), nor any position in government (Premier, Minister, Deputy Minister, Undersecretary).

2) Lowering of the age limit to be elected to the Lower House and to the Senate. You can be elected as a deputy on reaching 18 years (right now you have to wait to be 25), and you can be elected to the Senate at age 30 (currently you can’t be elected until you are 40).

3) A limit of 2 consecutive terms of office. I’ve put in a clause that forbids re-election for more than 2 consecutive terms of office for an elected position. This is because it was a fundamental point in Italia dei Valori’s manifesto that considers politics to be a service and not a profession.

A law that has the consent of 55% of the Italians, as you can see by the latest Eures report on politics that was published on 12 July, and that would make it possible to have thirty year old candidates for the position of Premier, instead of two candidates born in the 1930s."

Silvana Mura