Gianluca Busato (born

Treviso Treviso ( ; ; ) is a city and (municipality) in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 87.322 inhabitants (as of December 2024). Some 3,000 live within the Venetian wall ...

, 14 May 1969) is an Italian entrepreneur, engineer, activist and politician who is mostly known as the main organiser of the unofficial and online Venetian independence referendum, which took place in March 2014. As a university student of Engineering at the

University of Padua The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...

, Busato joined

Liga Veneta Liga Veneta (; ; abbr. LV), whose complete name is (), is a regionalist political party active in Veneto. The LV, whose ideology combines Venetian nationalism and support for fiscal federalism, was established in 1979 under the slogan "farthe ...

–

Lega Nord Lega Nord (LN; ), whose complete name is (), is a right-wing politics, right-wing, federalism, federalist, populism, populist and conservatism, conservative list of political parties in Italy, political party in Italy. In the run-up to the 201 ...

and was elected municipal councillor in Casier. Having been expelled from that party, he was one of the founding members of the Padanian Independentist Movement in 1997 and was its spokesperson for two years. In this capacity, he was convicted for having been an outspoken supporter of

Padania Padania ( , , ) is an alternative name and proposed independent state encompassing Northern Italy, derived from the name of the Po River (Latin ''Padus''), whose basin includes much of the region, centered on the Po Valley (), the major plain of ...

and of the Venetian Most Serene Government's seizure of St. Mark's Campanile in

Venice Venice ( ; ; , formerly ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 islands that are separated by expanses of open water and by canals; portions of the city are li ...

. This last event led Busato to abandon his early Padanist feelings and to adhere to the Venetian independence movement. According to his own words, Busato returned to active politics only after the depenalisation of "crimes of opinion". In 2006 he wrote a pamphlet on independence and was a founding member of the Venetians Movement and, a year later, he launched the

libertarian Libertarianism (from ; or from ) is a political philosophy that holds freedom, personal sovereignty, and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians believe that the concept of freedom is in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according ...

and avowedly

separatist Separatism is the advocacy of cultural, ethnic, tribal, religious, racial, regional, governmental, or gender separation from the larger group. As with secession, separatism conventionally refers to full political separation. Groups simply seekin ...

Venetian National Party (PNV), and served as its national secretary from 2008 to 2010. He was later active, often taking leadership roles, in a succession of separatist outfits, all emerged from bulk of the PNV: Veneto State (2010–2012),

Venetian Independence Venetian Independence (, , IV) is a Venetist, liberal and, to some extent, libertarian political party active in Veneto. The party seeks to achieve full political independence for the former territories of the Venetian Republic from Italy th ...

(2012–2013), Plebiscite 2013 (2013–2014) and, finally, Veneto Yes (since 2013). In 2014 Busato came to regional prominence as the main organiser of ''Plebiscito.eu'', an online referendum on Veneto's independence. According to the staff, 2.36 million Venetians (63.2% of all eligible voters) participated in the online referendum and 89.1% of them (that is to say 56.6% of all eligible voters) voted yes. This was enough for Busato and his followers to proclaim Veneto's independence from Italy in

on the night of 21 March. In the poll, ten "delegates for independence" were elected too: Busato was the most voted candidate with 135,306 preference votes. He has recently opened a crypto company in Slovenia, name
Enkronos
launching several ICOs since 2018. They claim to have collected 12 million dollars, both from Venetian people and other speculators.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Busato, Gianluca 1969 births Living people Politicians of Veneto Venetist politicians People from Treviso 20th-century Italian politicians 21st-century Italian politicians