Starting on October 15th all members of the Italian parliament, as well as parliamentary staff, will be required to present a Covid passport to enter parliament.
The requirement to present the passport, known as the Green Pass in Italy, will be mandatory for both members so the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the parliament, as well as Italian senators, and all of their staff.
Other branches of government such as the Italian presidency based out of the Quirinal Palace and the Italian constitutional court will also be required to possess and present the Green Pass, a report from the newspaper Il Giornale stated.
Claudio Borghi, a member of populist senator Matteo Salvini’s League (Lega), said that he welcomed the move, despite being an opponent of the Green Pass being extended to all private and public sector workers earlier this week, the first government in Europe to do so.
“I have said many times that I hoped that the obligation of the Green Pass would be extended to Parliament, so it would give me the opportunity to ask for a ruling of the Constitutional Court in defence of everyone’s work,” he said.
According to the newspaper Repubblica, the League is not united on the Green Pass, as some of the top leadership figures, such as Giancarlo Giorgetti and several League regional governors, have expressed support for a vaccine passport.
Matteo Salvini himself stated that if the parliament wanted to mandate the Green Pass to workers, it was only fair that parliamentarians themselves be subject to it.
The sentiment was echoed by Fabio Rampelli, a member of the national-conservative Brothers of Italy (FdI), who are often tied with Salvini’s League in recent polling and are the only major party not part of the grand national coalition government under Prime Minister Mario Draghi.
“Without prejudice to the fact that we are against the green pass, we have always maintained that if the rules apply to all citizens, they must also apply to parliamentarians,” Rampelli said.
According to the Italian news service Adnkronos, regional governments and councillors will also be required to present the Green Pass.
Workers in the public and private sectors who fail to present the Green Pass while working can face fines of up to €1,500 (£1,280/$1,765) and those who do not present it before they start work will be considered absent and will not be paid.