An Italian Senate committee has approved the draft text of a bill that could help authorities ban gatherings that promote antisemitism.
The draft bill was adopted last week but will be subject to amendments made by the Senate’s constitutional affairs committee. It will then be prepared for readings in both chambers of the Italian parliament.
Under the proposed legislation, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism would be binding for Italy's judiciary and law enforcement. The definition states that manifestations of antisemitism may include the targeting of the state of Israel, when it is conceived as a Jewish collectivity.
Opposed by some on the left, the draft bill has the support of the Italian right-wing parties and the country's Jewish community, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, Victor Fadlun, said.
If passed the law “could make Italy the first country to criminalise antisemitic speech according to the IHRA definition, and it would set an example that other countries could not so easily ignore,” said Fadlun.
Both Fadlun and Davide Romano, director of the Museum of the Jewish Brigade in Milan, believe the draft bill has a good chance of passing into law.
The bill, submitted by Senator Massimiliano Romeo of the right-wing Lega Party, would extend the 1931 Law on Public Safety to events with “a serious potential risk due to the use of symbols, slogans, messages, and any other antisemitic acts pursuant to the working definition of antisemitism adopted by this law.”
If passed, it could give new legal grounds for bans on protest rallies and gatherings.
Anti-Israel activists in recent months have challenged in Italian courts several bans on some of their activities. Authorities frequently cited general public-order considerations in issuing the bans. They were issued after the eruption of a wave of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment in Italy after the October 7 2023, Hamas-led terror attacks on Israel.
Romeo's draft bill would also require the government to set up a training programme for teachers, police and other public servants on antisemitism as defined by IHRA. Established in 1998, the IHRA is a coalition of governments from 35 countries, including the UK, Israel, the US, Australia, Argentina and 30 European nations.
The IHRA definition, which Italy adopted in 2020 but has not made legally binding, lists examples of anti-Israel criticism that it says in certain contexts can be defined as antisemitic, including comparing the country’s policies to those of Nazi Germany, denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.
Criticism of Israel similar to that levelled at any other country is not antisemitic, according to the definition.
Fadlun said he does not expect the text to undergo significant changes during the amendment phase. The bill is likely to pass sometime during the first half of 2026, he added.
Antisemitic incidents proliferated in Italy in the wake of October 7 Fadlun noted.
According to the CDEC Foundation, the Italian Jewish community’s antisemitism watchdog, there were 877 documented incidents of antisemitism in Italy in 2024, almost double the 454 incidents recorded in 2023.
Still, Fadlun said: “We have a better situation in Italy than many other communities because there is a real determination by the authorities to protect the Jewish community."
Under Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, he added: “There is a sense that there is also a sincere desire on the part of the political establishment to defend the Jewish community and the values of the republic.”
IHRA introduced its working definition of antisemitism in 2016, three years after the European Union’s anti-racism agency removed a similar text from its website amid protests by anti-Israel activists who argued it limited free speech.
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