Free and Equal (Italian: Liberi e Uguali, LeU) was a left-wing electoral list and parliamentary group in the Chamber of Deputies and a sub-group in the Senate, the two houses of the Italian Parliament. LeU was launched on 3 December 2017 as a federation of political parties including Article 1, Italian Left and Possible. The leader of the alliance for the 2018 general election was Pietro Grasso, former President of the Senate and former anti-Mafia prosecutor. The three founding parties left the alliance in late 2018, but LeU continued to exist in Parliament. Following the 2021 Italian government crisis, LeU had a single minister, Roberto Speranza, in the national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi.

Since the 2013 leadership election of the Democratic Party (PD), in which Matteo Renzi (a centrist) was elected secretary, the party was riven by an internal struggle between Renzi's large majority (composed of renziani, assorted centrists and moderate social democrats) and the left-wing factions which were very critical of Renzi, his government (2014–2016) and his proposed constitutional reform, which was finally voted down in a constitutional referendum in December 2016.

After the splits of Possible (Pos.) and Future to the Left (FaS), Enrico Rossi (leader of the Democratic Socialists faction and President of Tuscany) and Roberto Speranza (leader of Reformist Area and former PD leader in the Chamber of Deputies) became the leaders of the PD's internal left. They were backed by former DS and PD leaders Massimo D'Alema, Pier Luigi Bersani and Guglielmo Epifani. Rossi and Speranza criticised Renzi on many of his policies and were initially joined by Michele Emiliano, President of Apulia. In February 2017, the dissidents (except Emiliano, who stayed in the PD and would unsuccessfully challenge Renzi in the upcoming 2017 leadership election), and a group of SI splinters led by Arturo Scotto (a former DS member too) launched the Article 1 – Democratic and Progressive Movement (MDP), a month after the merger of Left Ecology Freedom (SEL), FaS and minor groups into Italian Left (SI).

Soon after the foundation of the MDP, Roberto Speranza (MDP coordinator), Nicola Fratoianni (SI secretary) and Giuseppe Civati (Pos. secretary) discussed the opportunity of forming a left-wing coalition as an alternative to the centre-left led by the PD, the centre-right and the Five Star Movement (M5S).

In the 2017 Sicilian regional election, the three left-wing parties, along with the Communist Refoundation Party, other parties and groups, ran in a joint list named One Hundred Steps for Sicily with Claudio Fava for President. Fava won 6.2% of the vote, the list 5.2% and only Fava was elected deputy in the Regional Assembly.

During a convention in Rome on 3 December 2017, the MDP–SI–Pos alliance was officially established as Free and Equal (LeU) and Pietro Grasso, President of the Senate and former anti-Mafia prosecutor, was appointed leader and candidate for Prime Minister in the 2018 general election. A few weeks later, also Laura Boldrini, President of the Chamber of Deputies (who had been elected as an independent of SEL in 2013), joined LeU. Another high-profile adherent was Rossella Muroni, who had been the president of Legambiente up to then. In January, LeU was joined also by the Greens of South Tyrol.

In January 2018, shortly before the election, some internal conflict started, with Grasso accused to be uncharismatic and uninfluential on alliance politics.

In March, LeU obtained 3.4% of the vote in the general election, well below expectations and opinion polls, electing 14 deputies and 4 senators.