FLI was formed by followers of Gianfranco Fini in July 2010 as a split from The People of Freedom (PdL), the major Italian centre-right party of the time, led by Silvio Berlusconi.

[4][5] Fini, former leader of the Italian Social Movement (MSI) and National Alliance (AN) and co-founder of the PdL in 2009, had taken a long journey from post-fascism to become a liberal conservative.

[5] The core of FLI was constituted by Generation Italy (GI), led by Italo Bocchino, who was also appointed vice president of the party by Fini.

Somewhat surprisingly, Gianfranco Fini, former leader of the national-conservative National Alliance (AN) and President of the Chamber of Deputies, became the most influential representative of the socially liberal wing of the party due to his progressive views on stem cell research, end of life issues, advance health care directives and immigration.

[7][8][9] Fini was also an outspoken supporter of the principle of separation of church and state and became also a vocal critic of Silvio Berlusconi and of his leadership style of the country and the party.

[10][11][12] Fini's positions distanced him from most former leading members of AN (including Ignazio La Russa, Maurizio Gasparri, Gianni Alemanno, Altero Matteoli and Giorgia Meloni) who became close allies of Berlusconi instead.

[21] On 30 July, Fini held a press conference during which he announced the formation of separate groups from the PdL both in the Chamber and the Senate under the name Future and Freedom for Italy (FLI).

The FLI group chose to abstain from the vote along with the Union of the Centre, Alliance for Italy and the Movement for the Autonomies, forming the so-called "area of responsibility".

[25][26] During the vote on Caliendo, Chiara Moroni, a social democrat formerly of the New Italian Socialist Party and Forza Italia, announced that she was leaving the PdL group in order to join Fini's outfit.

In a touching speech dedicated to her father Sergio Moroni, a Socialist who committed suicide during Tangentopoli, she explained that she was leaving the PdL in the name of garantismo (an Italian word for "protection of civil liberties" used in relation to the right to a fair trial).

[29] As a response, Berlusconi and his junior partner in government Umberto Bossi reiterated their call to Fini to resign from his post of President of the Chamber.

[37] The day after two more deputies joined the party: Roberto Rosso, a former Christian Democrat who had been leader of Forza Italia in Piedmont, and Daniele Toto.

[38] In Sicily the party joined forces with the remnants of the PdL–Sicily and formed an eight-strong group in the Regional Assembly in support of President Raffaele Lombardo.

[39][40] On 7 November, during a crowded convention in Bastia Umbra, Fini asked Berlusconi to step down from his post of Prime Minister and proposed a new government including the Union of the Centre (UdC).

During the congress, no-one questioned the leadership of Fini, but the party was divided between "radicals" (Italo Bocchino, Benedetto Della Vedova, Fabio Granata, Carmelo Briguglio, Flavia Perina, etc.)

and "moderates" (Adolfo Urso, Andrea Ronchi, Pasquale Viespoli, Mario Baldassarri and most senators), who strongly opposed the rise of Bocchino to party leadership.

[57] Viespoli, Menardi and Saia, along with other like-minded senators like Adriana Poli Bortone (I the South), formed a new centre-right group called National Cohesion and returned into the fold of the majority.

[76][77] In the meantime, most members of the former AN had either returned into the PdL's fold or joined Brothers of Italy, a party led by Giorgia Meloni and Ignazio La Russa which was granted by the "National Alliance Foundation" of the permission to use AN's name and symbol in December 2013.

Fini, who was not a member of the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in thirty years and was one of the few incumbent Presidents not to be returned to Parliament, continued his political activity through an association named FreeRight.

However most FLI members are Southern conservatives or MSI nostalgics worried by the growing influence of Lega Nord over the centre-right, federal reform and economic liberalism.

[78] First, on the relations with the PdL, at the beginning there was a clear divide between a "radical" wing (Italo Bocchino, Fabio Granata, Carmelo Briguglio, Flavia Perina, Luca Barbareschi and most deputies) and a "moderate" one (Andrea Ronchi, Pasquale Viespoli, Roberto Menia and most senators).