Alleged extension of referendum campaign signature collection deadlines: let’s have clarity!!!

WHEREAS, for the past few days, notices have appeared on the institutional websites of multiple Italian municipalities referring to an alleged extension of the deadline for collecting signatures related to the anti-hunting repeal referendums announced in Official Gazette General Series no. 83 of 07/04/2023, it is obligatory for this Association to issue this communiqué in order to provide due clarification in this regard and avoid unnecessary alarmism within our Association and, more generally, confusion among citizens.

From information obtained through institutional channels, it has been learned that, at present, no formal extension appears to have been granted at the institutional level about the aforementioned signature collection.

The only certain fact, on the contrary, is that the deadlines relating to the collection of signatures remain, even with reference to the referendums that concern us, the peremptory ones stipulated in Law no. 352/1970 , and as better specified also in the Order of 09/11/2021, in which the Central Referendum Office at the Supreme Court of Cassation, ruling on an identical issue and while taking into account the extension of the state of epidemiological emergency from COVID-19 then ordered by special regulatory measures, reiterated the legal principle that the time for the collection of signatures of subscribers is set at three months, starting from the first endorsement of the sheets used for signing.

In light of this, it is clear that any information or news, coming from individual municipalities or from the various Associations engaged in signature collection, which does not take into account the peremptory deadlines of the law as stated above, is to be considered absolutely erroneous and without foundation.

Therefore, all Associates are urged to be wary of the false news that has been raging for days on the websites of Associations Against Hunting or even on the institutional websites of some Italian municipalities, since, as already mentioned, at present they do not appear to be supported by any normative feedback nor by any institutional measure.

So much was owed for appropriate information.

Rome, June 19, 2023

Lawyer Antonello Meuti of the Ippoliti e Associati law firm, appointed by Arci Caccia to follow the path of the anti-hunting referendum on its behalf

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