| Liga Veneta Repubblica | |
|---|---|
| Secretary | Fabrizio Comencini |
| President | Gian Pietro Piotto |
| Founded | 5 October 1998 |
| Headquarters | via Catania, 11 37138 Verona |
| Newspaper | none |
| Membership | unknown |
| Ideology | Venetism, Regionalism, Fiscal federalism |
| International affiliation | none |
| European affiliation | European Free Alliance |
| European Parliament Group | currently no MEPs |
| Coalition | with the Union of the Centre |
| Website | |
| http://www.ligaveneta repubblica.org |
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| Politics of Italy Political parties Elections |
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Liga Veneta Repubblica (Łiga Vèneta Republica, Venetian Republic League, LVR) is a Venetist political party. The party maintains a mildly independentist position and campaingns the self-government of Veneto.
LVR emerged in 1998 as a split from Liga Veneta, the "national section" of Lega Nord in Veneto. Originally named Liga Veneta Repubblica, it changed its name to Veneti d'Europa (after the merger with Future Veneto in 2000) and Liga Fronte Veneto (after the merger with Fronte Marco Polo in 2001). It finally assumed again the original title in 2007. The party's founder and long-time leader is Fabrizio Comencini.
In its heyday the party included eight regional councillors, three deputies and four senators.
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In September 1998, after some clashes with Umberto Bossi, Fabrizio Comencini, national secretary of Liga Veneta since 1994, tried to lead the party out of the Lega Nord federation. This move was opposed by Bossi's loyalists and he was finally expelled from the party and replaced by Gian Paolo Gobbo as leader of Liga Veneta.
Subsequently seven out of eight members of the Liga Veneta–Lega Nord's group in the Regional Council of Veneto (Fabrizio Comencini, Ettore Beggiato, Alessio Morosin, Mariangelo Foggiato, Alberto Poirè, Michele Munaretto and Franco Roccon) left the party and launched Liga Veneta Repubblica (LVR), which was initially intended to be the legal continuation and legitimate heir of Liga Veneta. Another councillor, Adriano Bertaso of North-East Union, who had earlier left Lega Nord, joined the party for a while.
Comencini's followers represented the more Venetist and independentist wing of Liga Veneta, while the people who remained in Lega Nord were mainly fiscal federalists and Padanists. The former were also keen on an alliance with the centre-right Pole of Freedoms in Veneto in support of President Giancarlo Galan.
Although at the beginning many people thought that it was the end of Lega Nord in Veneto, as soon as in June 1999 it was clear that most voters of Liga Veneta had remained loyal to Gobbo and Bossi. In the 1999 European Parliament election LVR won 3.5% of the vote in Veneto: a good result for a new party, but far less than Liga Veneta and far less than expected.
For the 2000 regional election Liga Veneta made an alliance with the Pole of Freedoms that excluded LVR. The party, whose name was changed to Veneti d'Europa, won 2.4% (0.6% under the threshold needed), due to the presence of another Venetist party, Fronte Marco Polo (1.2%), and an electoral recovery of the Liga Veneta (12.0%). The name Veneti d'Europa (Venetians for Europe) was chosen as LVR merged with Future Veneto, member of the Autonomists for Europe, a federation of splinter groups from Lega Nord.
In 2001 the party, at the time led by the Venetist historian Ettore Beggiato, was merged with Fronte Marco Polo into the new Liga Fronte Veneto. Giorgio Vido was elected national secretary and Fabrizio Comencini national president.
In 2001 general election Giuseppe Segato, an independentist activist in jail for having opposed Italian national unity, was a party candidate for the Italian Senate. Despite gaining more than 5.6% of the votes in Veneto (mainly disgruntled voters of Lega Nord, after the alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia) and more than 10% in several single-seat constituencies, the party was not able to elect any representative to the Italian Parliament.
In 2003 Ettore Beggiato succeeded to Vido as national secretary in a difficult time for the party, that was not represented in the institutions and that was shrinking in opinion polls. In 2004 he tried to lead the party into the recent-born North-East Project (PNE), even if the PNE leader Giorgio Panto wanted LFV to join not as a party, but as a collection of single members.
Fabrizio Comencini ruled out the idea, that would have meant "the end to the party's autonomy". After a tumultuous congress, a group led by Ettore Beggiato, Mariangelo Foggiato and Michele Munaretto switched to North-East Project, while Fabrizio Comencini was elected national secretary and Alessio Morosin (who later would have joined PNE too) national president.
In the 2005 regional election the party supported the centre-left candidate for President, Massimo Carraro, winning only 1.2% of the vote, while PNE won 5.4% (16.1% in the Province of Treviso), and being excluded again from the Regional Council. For the 2006 general election Comencini forged an alliance with The Union coalition led by Romano Prodi, but voters seemed to not like the idea and the party stopped at 0.7%.
In the 2007 provincial election of Vicenza LFV supported Giorgio Carollo, along with parties both from the centre-left and the centre-right: Veneto for the EPP, Italy of Values, UDEUR Populars, Christian Democracy. Carollo scored 9.9%, while LFV took only 1.6%, compared with 2.3% of PNE and 19.0% of Liga Veneta, whose candidate Attilio Schneck was elected President by a landslide. Soon after the election the party returned to its original name, Liga Veneta Repubblica, under which it ran in the 2008 general election.
In October 2008 LVR signed a coalition pact with North-East Project (PNE) and Venetian Agreement (IV) for the next municipal, provincial and regional elections "in order to provide an adequate representation to the Venetian people, in line with what happens in Europe, from Scotland to Catalonia, from Wales to Brittany, where federalist, autonomist and independentist parties, who respond uniquely to their territory, see their popular support increasing."[1][2] However in 2009 provincial and municipal election LVR chose to support the candidates of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC), having its best result in the Province of Padua (1.6%).[3]
For the 2010 regional election, after having formed Veneto Freedom (VL) with other Venetist parties[4][5], the party finally chose to support Antonio De Poli (UDC) for President under the banner of North-East Union (UNE), along with UNE, PNE and IV.[6] This decision caused two splits: the more independentist wing, led by Silvano Polo, joined the new Party of the Venetians (PdV) and the left-wing minority faction, led by Bortolino Sartore and Giorgio Vido, formed a new party called Liga Veneto Autonomo (LVA) in support of Giuseppe Bortolussi, the centre-left candidate.
In the election the list won 1.5% of vote, with peaks of 1.9% and 1.8% in the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, and Mariangelo Foggiato (PNE) was elected to the Council. LVA, which was able to present its list only in the Province of Vicenza, one of the strongholds of LVR, won 1.1% of the vote there, that is to say a big part of the votes (1.6%) LVR gained in 2005.[7]
The electoral results of the party in Veneto since 1999 are shown in the table below.
| 1999 European | 2000 regional | 2001 general | 2004 European | 2005 regional | 2006 general | 2008 general | 2010 regional |
| 3.5 | 3.6[8] | 2.4[9] | 0.6 | 1.2 | 0.6 | 1.7[10] | 1.5%[11] |
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