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Five Star Movement
Italian political party / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Five Star Movement (Italian: Movimento 5 Stelle [moviˈmento ˈtʃiŋkwe ˈstelle], M5S) is a political party in Italy. Its leader and president is Giuseppe Conte, who served as Prime Minister of Italy from 2018 until 2021.[3] The party was founded on 4 October 2009 by Beppe Grillo, a political activist and comedian, and Gianroberto Casaleggio, a web strategist.[4] It is primarily described as populist[5][6][7] of the syncretic kind,[8][9][10] due to its members' long-time insistence that it has no place in the left–right political spectrum.[11][12] The party has been a proponent of green politics[13] and direct democracy,[14][15] and, since the party's crescent involvement in the centre-left coalition, progressivism,[16] social democracy[17] and left-wing populism.[18]
Five Star Movement Movimento Cinque Stelle | |
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Abbreviation | M5S |
President | Giuseppe Conte |
Guarantor | Beppe Grillo |
Founders | Beppe Grillo Gianroberto Casaleggio |
Founded | 4 October 2009; 14 years ago (2009-10-04) |
Headquarters | Via Campo Marzio 46, Rome |
Newspaper | Il Blog di Beppe Grillo (2009–2018) Il Blog delle Stelle (2018–2021) |
Membership (2024) | 170,000[1] |
Ideology |
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Political position | [A] |
European Parliament group | EFDD (2014–2019) NI (2019–2024) The Left (since 2024) |
Colors | Yellow |
Chamber of Deputies | 51 / 400 |
Senate | 27 / 200 |
European Parliament | 8 / 76 |
Regional Councils | 61 / 896 |
Conference of Regions | 1 / 21 |
Website | |
movimento5stelle | |
^ A: The party has been variously considered left- or right-wing populist, as well as being considered a big tent party. Since the early 2020s the party has been primarily seen and described by its leaders as left-leaning.[2] |
From 2014 to 2017, the M5S was a member of the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group in the European Parliament, along with the UK Independence Party and minor Eurosceptic parties. In January 2017, M5S members voted in favour of Grillo's proposal to join the ALDE Group but the party was eventually refused,[19][20] and sat as Non-Inscrits in the European Parliament, until joining The Left following the 2024 European Parliament election.[21][22]
In November 2014, Grillo appointed a directory composed of five leading members: Alessandro Di Battista, Luigi Di Maio, Roberto Fico, Carla Ruocco, and Carlo Sibilia.[23][24] It lasted until the following October when Grillo dissolved it and proclaimed himself the political head of the M5S.[25] From the foundation until 2021, Grillo also formally served as president of the association named Five Star Movement; his nephew Enrico Grillo served as vice-president and his accountant Enrico Maria Nadasi as secretary.[26][27] In the 2017 M5S leadership election, Di Maio won 82% of the vote, while Grillo continued to be M5S's guarantor.[28][29] In January 2018, Grillo separated his own blog, which was used the party's online newspaper, with the brand-new Blog delle Stelle.[30] After the 2021 leadership election, a new party statute was approved and former Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte became the new president, while Grillo continued as guarantor of the movement.[31] M5S has undergone several splits since its formation, including the formation of Alternativa, Environment 2050, and most recently Di Maio's Together for the Future.[32] In the 2013 Italian general election, the M5S was the second-most popular single party and the third-most popular political force overall, behind the centre-left coalition and the centre-right coalition.[33] The M5S rejected a proposed coalition government with the Democratic Party and entered opposition.[34][35] In 2016, its candidates, Chiara Appendino and Virginia Raggi were elected mayors of Turin and Rome, respectively.[36] The M5S supported the successful No vote in the 2016 constitutional referendum.[37] In the 2018 general election, the M5S became the largest party overall,[38][39][40] and successfully formed a government headed by M5S-backed independent Giuseppe Conte together with Lega. In 2019 the government collapsed and the party formed a new government with the centre-left Democratic Party, with Conte remaining premier until the 2021 government crisis, which resulted in the formation of a national unity government, which lasted until the 2022 election.[41][42] The party suffered a substantial defeat in the 2022 general election, winning 15% of the vote to become the third-most-voted party, but due to the electoral system became the fourth-largest party in parliament, where it sits in opposition to the Meloni government.[43] Thanks in part to a strong performance in Southern Italy, the M5S defied single-digits polls in July 2022,[44] and they won single-member constituencies in the South that otherwise would have been won by the centre-right coalition.[45][46] In the 2024 Sardinian regional election, the M5S candidate Alessandra Todde was elected president of Sardinia, the party's first regional president and the region's first female president,[47][48] at the head of a centre-left coalition.[49]