PRESS RELEASE
In recent days we have read, across various news outlets, the most disparate updates on the legal case involving our Party and Michela Pelliccioni. The matter, however, deserves a reconstruction based on facts, free from oversimplification, distortion and personal confrontation.
Michela Pelliccioni shared the political journey of DOMANI – Motus Liberi for years, holding positions and choosing once again to run under the Party’s symbol in 2024, after having helped introduce into the Statute the rule requiring members who leave the Party to resign from the offices they hold. On 16 July 2025, without having expressed any kind of dissent within the Party and without any prior notice, but having instead claimed to be ill, Michela Pelliccioni informed Their Excellencies the Captains Regent and RTV of her departure from the Council Group, declaring herself an independent Councillor.
Among the reasons publicly cited for this decision is a diverging position on the Association Agreement with the European Union. A political disagreement would certainly be legitimate, if one actually existed, but our position cannot be reduced to opposition to Europe used as an excuse to justify an act carried out with a total lack of respect. On the very same day of her resignation, the Party presented and supported a motion in favour of European integration, rightly calling for analysis, data, documentation and citizen involvement. This has been the Party’s historic position since 2018, and one that Michela Pelliccioni herself has always shared. Public statements and documents allow this position to be reconstructed without oversimplification.
As DOMANI – Motus Liberi, we do not dispute anyone’s right to disagree, change their mind, or leave a Party. What we dispute is the notion that commitments freely undertaken can be considered irrelevant simply because one holds political office. This is the basis of the civil case we have initiated: a claim for damages suffered by the Party as a result of the breach of our Statute. The claim, formulated for up to 50,000 euros (which, as any lawyer knows, is a maximum threshold that must be stated by law), does not represent compensation already awarded. It will be solely up to the Court to certify and quantify any eventual damage.
Indeed, just as a citizen is bound to honour the contracts they sign, so too must a politician who has signed an agreement. Otherwise, there would be no point in drafting and adopting Statutes, since anyone could then feel free to disregard them.
We have also written to the Bureau of the Council (Ufficio di Presidenza), which Councillor Pelliccioni improperly involved in her request to have her legal costs covered, to express our opposition to any use of public funds to support the legal defence of a party in a civil dispute with their former Party. We believe that legal costs connected to a matter of a personal and political nature, arising from the failure to honour statutory commitments freely undertaken, should not be shifted onto public institutions and, consequently, onto citizens. We therefore ask that no financial coverage be granted at the public’s expense in the absence of clear, verifiable legal grounds applied under the same criteria to everyone.
Our position is simple: anyone who chooses to pursue a civil dispute must assume the related responsibilities and costs, without expecting citizens to foot the bill. Institutions must guarantee transparency, impartiality and equal treatment — not become a tool for shifting onto the community the legal burdens of a matter concerning a Party and one of its former members.
DOMANI – Motus Liberi
