Quiet, Please: Italy’s Meloni Cracks Down on Rave Parties, Sparking a Backlash
A former Italian prime minister criticized the decree as ‘horrifying’ and something that would be expected ‘from a police state.’

With all the problems facing Italy, from rising inflation to illegal immigration, the noisy parties known as raves would appear to be among the least pressing. Yet one person who is apparently fed up with them is the country’s new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who in a polarizing move has just enacted a law that will punish organizers of illegal raves with fines and jail terms.
Under the new decree, organizers of raves deemed to put public order or safety at risk will be fined up to about $10,000 and face prison sentences of three to six years.
The sudden legislative move was in keeping with the campaign platform of Ms. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and follows a reference that Ms. Meloni made during a press conference earlier this week — her first as premier — to an illegal rave that took place outside Rome over the summer. One person died during that event. “It struck me that thousands of the people who arrived in Italy to wreak havoc had come from all over Europe because the impression of Italy in recent years has been one of laxity in terms of respecting rules,” Ms. Meloni said Monday, adding, “now Italy is no longer the nation in which one can commit a crime; there are rules and they are being enforced.”
What galvanized the new far-right government over the issue was a large and illegal three-day Halloween rave that took place at an abandoned warehouse in central Italy. According to the Guardian newspaper, Ms. Meloni’s new interior minister, Matteo Piantedosi, ordered the eviction on Sunday of more than 3,000 rave-goers from the warehouse and placed 14 people, including one Dutch citizen, under investigation.
Participants at raves, which are a nuisance to many but also very popular among certain segments of European youth, will not face fines as steep as those of event organizers or promoters. Because the law applies to those who “arbitrarily invade other people’s land or buildings,” though, there are fears of government overreach. La Repubblica reported that because the law specifies that groups of people numbering more than 50 would put public safety at risk, the rule would not only apply to dancers at a rave event “but also, potentially, for those who occupy a building during a protest.”
A former Italian prime minister and current leader of the Five Star Movement party, Giuseppe Conte, criticized the decree as “horrifying” and something that would be expected “from a police state.” The more powerful head of the center-left Democratic party, Enrico Letta, had a different response, saying that “the modification of article 434 of the Criminal Code calls into question the freedom of citizens to demonstrate” — and has asked for the law to be withdrawn.
Mr. Piantedosi countered that “the right of expression is not infringed.” In any case, La Stampa reported that the new law may yet be revised in parliament.
According to La Stampa, the new deputy minister and undersecretary of justice, Francesco Paolo Sisto, indicated that the anti-rave decree could be modified during the parliamentary debate. Mr. Sistro also said that “the intention is to target the raves, that is situations in which, above all due to the widespread use of drugs, concrete dangers are created for order and public health.”
Ms. Meloni has doubled down. In a Facebook post on Wednesday she affirmed that the decree “is a rule that I claim and of which I am proud,” adding, “but I would like to reassure all citizens that we will not deny anyone the expression of dissent.”
A test of that assertion could be coming before the ink even dries on the new decree. Last month the New York Times reported that Mr. Conte would be joining a march “demanding peace for Ukraine and an end to arms shipments” in early November. It may be unusual, but how Italy’s civic order apparatus under the Meloni administration responds to that or similar large and legal political gatherings may soon be seen through the prism of how it reacts to, of all things, illicit youth raves.