If DOMANI – Motus Liberi goes ahead with its lawsuit against Michela Pelliccioni, the State will provide the councillor’s legal defence. That is the position relayed to San Marino RTV by sources within the majority coalition.
The Bureau of the Grand and General Council (Consiglio Grande e Generale) has once again taken up the case and postponed its decision pending further developments. Today in court the case formally opened with the constitution of the parties: the movement is seeking up to €50,000 from Pelliccioni because, having left the party on 16 July 2025, she did not vacate her seat as required by Article 24 of its statute. Tonight the Motus assembly meets and is expected to revisit the matter: should there be a change of heart, the dispute would end there.
Never before has a San Marino party taken a former councillor to court over the so-called “mandate bond” — the idea that an elected member remains bound to the party under which they were elected. The reason this dispute has landed on the desk of the Institutions lies entirely in what the lawsuit is actually about.
Pelliccioni is not being challenged over a statement, an expense or private conduct: she is being asked to pay for having remained a councillor. That is the basis of the letter she sent on 25 August asking the Captains Regent and the Council Bureau to cover her legal costs.
The lawsuit, she argues, does not target her as a private individual but strikes at her role as an elected representative.
It is a role that the Republic’s rules define with precision.
Under the Council’s Rules of Procedure, any member who declares independence from their group, without forming or joining another, is automatically placed in the Mixed Group (Gruppo Misto), where Pelliccioni currently sits. In 2022, a citizens’ petition (istanza d’Arengo) called for reducing the pay and prerogatives of councillors who break away from their original list.
In its opinion on that petition, the Council’s Institutional Secretariat Office stated in writing that San Marino’s legal system does not recognise a binding mandate. Councillors represent the whole people and must act in the interest of the country, not of the party under whose banner they were elected. Such a binding mandate, the opinion noted, could only be introduced through a constitutional-level provision. For those who change course, the document acknowledged only political accountability, to be settled at the ballot box: “if voters are not satisfied with an elected official, they simply won’t vote for them again.”
Much of the money at stake, moreover, is public. Back in December, in a formal warning letter, the movement had already asked Pelliccioni to resign and return the attendance fees and sums received as an independent. In the lawsuit, the largest item amounts to roughly €28,000: this is the public funding tied to the seat, which since Pelliccioni’s departure no longer goes to the party. If that money now goes to her rather than to the movement, it is not the result of any agreement or accounting choice — it is the law on party financing that dictates the funding follows the councillor who leaves the group, taking it away from the group they departed.
In other words, the damages the movement is seeking correspond exactly to what the law provides for when a councillor does what the Rules of Procedure allow.
The movement’s argument is that the statute constitutes a contract between members, and there is a fact that supports this. Pelliccioni was present at the assembly of 31 May 2022 that introduced the clause and, according to the records, voted in favour of it. This is the point the judge will have to rule on.
Then there is the more immediate objection: why should taxpayers foot the bill for a dispute born inside a political party? That is the question the Council Bureau will have to resolve. The answer depends on what one considers to be truly at stake.
It could be seen as a private matter between a movement and one of its former members. Or it could be seen as a question of the freedom of mandate of an elected official — an issue on which a San Marino judge will rule for the first time, in a decision bound to have implications for all sixty seats in the Council.
Tonight, the next move belongs to Motus.
If the assembly decides to drop the matter, there will be nothing left to decide.
If it decides to press on, the Council Bureau will have to address, through a formal resolution, the very same question the Council’s own offices had already settled four years ago: to whom is an elected official accountable when they choose to remain in their seat.
