Nazareno Pact

The Nazareno Pact was a political agreement signed on 18 January 2014 between Matteo Renzi, leader of the Democratic Party of Italy, and Silvio Berlusconi, president of Forza Italia, providing for institutional reforms including changes to the electoral system, a reduction in the powers of the Senate, and reform of Title V of the Italian Constitution governing relations between the state and the regions. It took its name from the Largo del Nazareno location of the Rome headquarters of the Democratic Party, where the two leaders first met to negotiate it, and it brought together two parties normally on opposite sides of Italian politics. Renzi became prime minister barely a month later, on 22 February 2014, but most of the central proposals of the pact ultimately failed: voters rejected the constitutional reform in a December 2016 referendum and the courts found the proposed electoral law partly unconstitutional, setbacks that contributed to the resignation of Renzi. The pact itself had effectively ended earlier, in February 2015, after the election of Sergio Mattarella as president.