Five Star Movement Pizzarotti began his political career in 2009, joining the newly formed M5S of
Beppe Grillo and
Gianroberto Casaleggio. With the M5S, he ran as a regional councilor in the
2010 Emilia-Romagna regional election but was not elected. In November 2015, Pizzarotti was appointed by the ANCI as president of the Environmental Policies, Territory, Civil Protection, Energy and Waste Commission. In October 2016, Pizzarotti left the M5S after years of tensions with the national leadership of the party that culminated in his suspension in February 2016. In his role as mayor, he had been among those investigated for
abuse of office in an investigation into appointments at the
Teatro Regio. The investigation was made public in May 2016. On 13 May 2016, for not having disclosed the opening of the investigation and for his refusal to send the legal documents via email to the sender Grillo's staff, since he said they were anonymous, Grillo's blog announced the suspension of Pizzarotti from the M5S, with the possibility of reply within ten days. On 23 May 2016, Pizzarotti, contesting the suspension, sent his counterarguments and was awaiting a response. On 16 September 2016, following the dismissal of the charges against him, he asked to be reinstated within the M5S; as he received no response, and with the new regulations that were modified during the suspension, Pizzarotti announced that he was leaving the M5S on 3 October 2016. Following his exit from the M5S, with the support of 18 out of the 19 councilors elected and who left the M5S with him, Pizzarotti founded the Parma Effect (
Effetto Parma, EP) council group.
Parma Effect, Italy in Common, and National Civic List After his departure from the M5S, Pizzarotti continued his mandate as an
independent politician with the support of the city council group Parma Effect, which was composed of former M5S councillors who stood by their mayor. He ran for re-election through a civic list. On 25 June 2017, after gaining access to the runoff, Pizzarotti was confirmed mayor of Parma for a second term by running as an independent supported by his civic movement Parma Effect. He defeated the centre-left coalition candidate Paolo Scarpa with 57.87% of the votes. On 15 April 2018, Pizzarotti founded IiC as his political movement, calling itself the Mayors' Party. It ran in support of the centre-left coalition candidates in the
2019 Italian regional elections, such as in
Abruzzo,
Sardinia, and
Piedmont, which were won the by the centre-right coalition; apart from Piedmont, where it obtained 0.58% of the votes, it elected at least a councilor. The Abruzzo in Common movement, which was aligned in support of the centre-left candidate
Giovanni Legnini, obtained 3.89% of the votes and elected a councillor. The Sardinia in Common list, which was made up of Italia in the Municipality of Sardegna,
Possible,
Laura Boldrini's Futura, and
Radicales Sardos, supported the centre-left coalition candidate
Massimo Zedda; it garnered 2.5% of the votes and elected a councilor. In the run-up to
2019 European Parliament election in Italy, Pizzarotti decided to run for
Member of the European Parliament (MEP) within a joint list of IiC, +Eu, and other minor parties. Initially, IiC had allied itself with the
Federation of the Greens, before it decided to ally with +Eu. Pizzarotti was a candidate in the
North-East Italy constituency for +Eu; he came second with 22,127 preferences but was not elected as the list did not exceed the minimum access threshold. In 2022, at the end of his second term as mayor, he and Parma Effect supported the candidacy for mayor of his technical councilor for culture
Michele Guerra, also supported by the centre-left coalition, who was elected as the new mayor. Ahead of the
2022 Italian general election, Pizzarotti launched the LCN, a formation of centre-left coalition administrators that also included LIC, a political association founded by the
Italia Viva (IV) deputy Gianfranco Librandi and former +Eu deputy secretary Piercamillo Falasca. Pizzarotti's new political party did not need to collect signatures for the 22 September 2022 general election thanks to
Matteo Renzi's party, whose group in the
Chamber of Deputies changes its name on 1 August 2022 to Italia Viva − Italia C'è. On 7 August 2022, Pizzarotti announced the alliance between the LCN and IV, which was ended on 22 August 2022 following disagreements over the composition of the electoral lists. Pizzarotti would have been candidate in third position in the multi-member constituency
Emilia-Romagna 2 behind Calenda and
Lisa Noja.
More Europe and Action In November 2022, Pizzarotti announced his membership in +Eu and at the same time his presidential candidacy for the next congress to determine
Benedetto Della Vedova's successor at the helm of the party. In February 2023, he opposed the decision of the then current leaders, headed by
Emma Bonino, to register the party brand in their name on 20 February 2022. It was later clarified that this did not happen and was only a precautionary initiative. During the third +Eu congress on 26 February 2023, Pizzarotti was elected president of the party with 203 votes, succeeding
Riccardo Magi, who was elected the party's secretary. Following Magi's and +Eu's decision to join the United States of Europe list with Renzi's IV ahead of the
2024 European Parliament election in Italy, which Pizzarotti did not share, he left the party on 10 April 2024. He cited as reasons for his exit the alliance with
Salvatore Cuffaro and his candidates, such as Cuffaro's brother-in-law
Marco Zambuto, as well as
Clemente Mastella's wife Sandra Lonardo, and Armando Cesaro, the son of
Forza Italia (FI) politician Luigi Cesaro and former FI group leader in the
Regional Council of Campania who was appointed head of IV's local authorities. He described them as "not very Pro-Europeanism|[pro-]'European' and very distant from our way of doing politics and our original mission". Pizzarotti entered Az, Calenda's party, and was joined by Falasca. Pizzarotti was announced as the 2024 European Parliament candidate for Az's list We Are Europeans in the North-East Italy constituency. == Personal life ==