Former MPs aren't giving up on pensions: "Here's our proposal to save €20 million."

They announce new initiatives, with possible appeals at European level and in the Supreme Court. The former parliamentarians are challenging the ruling by which the Chamber of Deputies' Appeals Board, the Supreme Court of Cassation, rejected their appeal on Wednesday to prevent cuts to pensions and instead upheld the pension cuts for 800 former members.

Thus, the former parliamentarians' association is back on the offensive. After calling the ruling "a legal blunder," it has now relaunched its political campaign, formalizing a proposal informally presented to Chamber of Deputies Speaker Lorenzo Fontana in the spring: to waive the ISTAT adjustment of pensions in order to spread the reduction in pensions across all former deputies, which currently affects only 800 of the 3,300 former deputies. The proposed proposal would save the Chamber of Deputies nearly €20 million.

The president of the Association of Former Parliamentarians, Peppino Gargani , himself a jurist and former member of the CSM, questioned whether the Chamber's internal judicial bodies acted as such, instead following political logic. In their eyes, Giuseppe Conte confirmed this, calling it a "political victory."

Having exhausted their internal jurisdiction, the former parliamentarians are turning to the political route, which in 2018, under the presidency of Roberto Fico , initiated the reduction of pensions with a resolution (14/2018), which was partially undermined by various rulings from the internal courts of Montecitorio. These rulings "saved" the most senior former deputies, leaving the burden of the cuts to the relatively younger ones. Hence the appeal, which was rejected on Wednesday.

Furthermore, the ruling, as the ruling itself explains, came after 250 former members have since died (including Guido Bodrato , former PSDI secretary Giorgio Carta , radicals Roberto Cicciomessere and Gianfranco Spadaccia , former PRI secretary Francesco Nucara , former minister Giancarlo Tesini, Giulio Santagata, Antonio La Forgia, Paolo Pillitteri, Carlo Tognoli, Ugo Intini, and former minister Aristide Gunnella ), and one of the lawyers representing them, Felice Besostri , also died. The proposal outlined would save the Chamber of Deputies nearly €20 million (€19.98 million according to the internal budget to be discussed this week) by waiving future appeals. It's an interesting offer because a fund had to be created in the internal budget with a reserve of €113 million in the event of losing any future appeals. And the former members intend to do so at the European Court of Human Rights. The floor now passes to politicians and President Lorenzo Fontana, to whom they are appealing.