The decriminalisation measure was part of a package of justice reforms that passed the Chamber of Deputies by 199 votes to 102 on Wednesday.

The reform was spearheaded by Forza Italia, the party founded by former premier Silvio Berlusconi – whose long political career was marked by endless legal cases and accusations of cronyism and corruption.

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Promoters of the reform argued that the law deterred public officials from making decisions involving tenders out of fear of being accused of abuse of office.

They also pointed to the fact that 80 percent of legal proceedings involving the crime were dismissed, and innocent officials disgraced.

The Italian legal code will retain anti-corruption laws linked to public contracts, though more restrictively worded.

“Illicit behaviour will continue to be prosecuted – there are still instruments in the penal code,” said Mariastella Gelmini, a former minister under Berlusconi who is now in a small centrist party.

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Also voting for the reform was the far-right Brothers of Italy and League parties, headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini respectively.

Three centrist parties also voted for the reform.

The Democratic Party, the Five Star Movement and the Greens and Left Alliance voted against it, holding up posters in parliament on Wednesday reading “Impunity for white-collar workers, shame on you!”

The respected former anti-mafia prosecutor Federico Cafiero De Raho told the Corriere della Sera daily on Wednesday that citizens reporting public corruption “will no longer be protected by the law”.

“The citizen who must report the violation of the rules of a tender, or the bypassing of a hospital’s waiting lists or the illegal concession given to a neighbour to build where he couldn’t, will no longer have criminal protection,” he said.

He said that while serving as a prosecutor in Calabria – a poor southern region whose powerful ‘Ndrangheta mafia is notorious for infiltrating public institutions and rigging tenders – “the mayors told us that thanks to the abuse of office [crime], they could say no to the ‘Ndrangheta’.”

“They said they couldn’t break the rules or they would be convicted.”