Francesco Lollobrigida

Last updated

Francesco Lollobrigida
Francesco Lollobrigida 2022 (cropped).png
Lollobrigida in 2022
Minister of Agriculture
Incumbent
Assumed office
22 October 2022
Domestic partnerArianna Meloni
Children2
Alma mater Niccolò Cusano University

Francesco Lollobrigida (born 21 March 1972) is an Italian politician who has been the minister of Agriculture since 22 October 2022. A leading member of the national-conservative Brothers of Italy, Lollobrigida is widely considered one of the closest allies of Giorgia Meloni. [1]

Contents

Early life, family and education

Lollobrigida was born in Tivoli, Lazio on 21 March 1972. He is the grandnephew of actress Gina Lollobrigida, and the cousin of the Olympic speed skating silver medalist Francesca Lollobrigida. [2] He graduated in law from the Niccolò Cusano telematic university. [3]

His domestic partner is Arianna Meloni who is the sister of incumbent Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. [4] They have two daughters. [5]

Career

During the 1990s, Lollobrigida started his involvement in politics within the Youth Front (FdG), the youth-wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). Until 1995, Lollobrigida served as provincial secretary of FdG for Rome. From 1997 to 1999, he served as leader of Student Action, a far-right student movement connected to National Alliance (AN), the MSI's heir. During this period, he also held various political positions at the provincial level, including municipal councilor in Subiaco (1996–2000), provincial councilor in Rome (1998–2003) and councilor for sport, culture and tourism in the municipality of Ardea (2005–2006). [3]

He run in the 2005 Lazio regional election, in support of incumbent President Francesco Storace, but he was not elected. On 5 July 2006, he was elected regional councilor in Lazio, taking over from Andrea Augello, elected to the Senate of the Republic in the 2006 general election. In 2008, he became provincial president of National Alliance for Rome and from 2010 to 2012 he held the same position in The People of Freedom (PdL). [6] On 17 April 2010, he was appointed councilor for mobility and transport in the Lazio regional government of Renata Polverini, a position he held until 12 March 2013. [7]

Since 2012, Lollobrigida is a member of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) and was elected as a deputy for Lazio region representing the party in the 2018 general election. [8] From June 2018 he served as its parliamentary group leader In the 2022 general elections he also won a seat in the Parliament. [3] He was appointed minister of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests on 22 October 2022 in the government led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. [6]

Controversy

On 19 April 2023 Lollobrigida attracted criticism for his remarks to a trade union conference suggesting that "Italians are having fewer children, so we're replacing them with someone else. [We say] yes to helping births, no to ethnic replacement. That’s not the way forward." [9] Responding to his statement opposition politicians cited references to Italian fascist rhetoric of the 1930s. News reports set his remarks in the wider context of the racist Great Replacement theory. [10]

In November 2023, the Italian government banned lab-grown meat during his term as Agriculture minister. Critics fear that the ban might hurt animal welfare and the global climate. [11]

In the same month Lollobrigida was granted an "extraordinary stop" at Ciampino, on a high-speed-train that was 110-minutes-late, to inaugurate an urban park in Caviano. [12] [13] In response, he faced calls from the opposition to resign, Lollobrigida rejected the demands stating, "I asked for something like any other citizen. And I’m not resigning." [14]

Electoral history

ElectionHouseConstituencyPartyVotesResult
2018 Chamber of Deputies Lazio 2 FdI – [a] Yes check.svgYElected
2022 Chamber of Deputies Lazio 2 FdI – [a] Yes check.svgYElected
  1. 1 2 Elected in a closed list proportional representation system.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Alliance (Italy)</span> Conservative political party in Italy

National Alliance was a national conservative political party in Italy. It was the successor of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), a neo-fascist party founded in 1946 by former followers of Benito Mussolini that had moderated its policies over its last decades and finally distanced itself from its former ideology, a move known as post-fascismo, during a convention in Fiuggi by dissolving into the new party in 1995.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gianfranco Rotondi</span> Italian politician (born 1960)

Gianfranco Rotondi is an Italian politician. A member of the Italian Parliament since 1994, he was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 1996, from 2001 to 2006, and since 2008, as well as a member of the Senate of the Republic from 2006 to 2008. He was also a Minister without Portfolio for the Implementation of the Government Program in the fourth Berlusconi government from 2008 to 2011.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Storace</span> Italian politician (born 1959)

Francesco Storace is an Italian politician and journalist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests (Italy)</span> Italian government agency

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Forests, Italian: Ministero dell'agricoltura, della sovranità alimentare e delle foreste or MASAF, is an Italian government department.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ignazio La Russa</span> Italian politician (born 1947)

Ignazio Benito Maria La Russa is an Italian politician who is serving as president of the Senate of the Republic since 13 October 2022. He is the first politician with a neo-fascist background to hold the position of President of the Senate, the second highest-ranking office of the Italian Republic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giorgia Meloni</span> Prime Minister of Italy since 2022

Giorgia Meloni is an Italian politician who has been serving as the prime minister of Italy since October 2022, the first woman to hold this position. A member of the Chamber of Deputies since 2006, she has led the right-wing Brothers of Italy (FdI) political party since 2014 and has been the president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party since 2020. Forbes ranked Meloni as the fourth most powerful woman in the world in 2023. In 2024 she was listed among the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

The Acca Larentia killings, also known in Italy as the Acca Larentia massacre, were a double homicide that occurred in Rome on 7 January 1978. The attack was claimed by the self-described Nuclei Armati per il Contropotere Territoriale. Members of militant far-left groups were charged but acquitted, and the culprits were never identified.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brothers of Italy</span> Italian political party

Brothers of Italy is a national-conservative and right-wing populist political party in Italy, that is currently the country's ruling party. After becoming the largest party in the 2022 Italian general election, it consolidated as one of the two major political parties in Italy during the 2020s along with the Democratic Party. The party is led by Giorgia Meloni, the incumbent Prime Minister of Italy. Meloni's tenure has been described as the "most right-wing" republican government in Italy since World War II, whilst her time in government is frequently described as a shift towards the far-right in Italian politics.

Italy First was a national-conservative political party in Italy, which was briefly a faction of Brothers of Italy (FdI) and then joined into National Action (AN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesca Lollobrigida</span> Italian speed skater (born 1991)

Francesca Lollobrigida is an Italian speed skater. She was born in Frascati. She competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where she placed 23rd in the 3000 meters. Actress Gina Lollobrigida was her grand-aunt, though the two had never met. The lawyer and politician, and current Minister of Agriculture of Italy, Francesco Lollobrigida, is her cousin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guido Crosetto</span> Italian businessman and politician (born 1963)

Guido Crosetto is an Italian businessman and politician who has served as Minister of Defence since 22 October 2022 in the government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Movement for Sovereignty</span> Political party in Italy

The National Movement for Sovereignty was a national-conservative political party in Italy, founded on 18 February 2017, with the merger of National Action and The Right. Its founders were Gianni Alemanno and Francesco Storace, both former ministers and former leaders of the two founding parties, respectively.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carlo Fidanza</span> Italian politician (born 1976)

Carlo Fidanza is an Italian politician who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since 2019, previously holding a seat from 2009 to 2014. He is a member of Brothers of Italy (FdI).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fabio Rampelli</span> Italian politician (born 1960)

Fabio Rampelli is an Italian politician.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2022 Italian government formation</span>

In the 2022 Italian general election, the centre-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) won an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament. On 20 October, a few days following the elections of the presidents of the two houses of Parliament, Ignazio La Russa of FdI on 13 October for the Senate of the Republic, and Lorenzo Fontana of the League on 14 October for the Chamber of Deputies, consultations on the formation of a new cabinet officially began.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meloni government</span> 68th and current government of the Italian Republic

The Meloni government is the 68th and current government of the Italian Republic, the first headed by Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, who is also the first woman to hold the office of Prime Minister of Italy. The government was sworn in on 22 October 2022. It was one of the fastest government formations in the history of the Italian Republic. It was variously described as a shift to the political right, as well as the first far-right-led coalition in Italy since World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eugenia Roccella</span> Italian journalist and politician (born 1953)

Eugenia Maria Roccella is an Italian journalist and politician, who has been serving as Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the Meloni Cabinet since 22 October 2022. She is a member of Brothers of Italy (FdI), the party led by the prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gennaro Sangiuliano</span> Italian journalist, writer, and politician (born 1962)

Gennaro Sangiuliano is an Italian journalist, writer, and politician who served as Minister of Culture in the Meloni Cabinet. He was the director of the Roma newspaper in Naples from 1996 to 2001 and of TG2 from 2018 to 2022, as well as the deputy director of the Libero newspaper and of TG1 from 2009 to 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Francesco Rocca (politician)</span> Italian politician (born 1965)

Francesco Rocca is an Italian independent politician and former President of the Italian Red Cross who has served as President of Lazio since March 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giovanni Donzelli</span> Italian politician (born 1975)

Giovanni Donzelli is an Italian politician of Brothers of Italy serving as member of the Chamber of Deputies. He was first elected in the 2018 general election and was re-elected in 2022.

References

  1. ↑ Emanuele Lauria (21 February 2023). "L'uomo chiave del governo: tutto su Lollobrigida, il cognato di Meloni (e non solo) ministro all'Agricoltura (e non solo)". la Repubblica (in Italian). Retrieved 21 February 2023.
  2. ↑ Luca Bucceri (19 April 2023). "Chi è Francesco Lollobrigida: da FdI al ministero dell'agricoltura e della sovranità alimentare con Meloni". Notizie.Virgilio.it (in Italian). Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 "Lollobrigida, Francesco". Treccani (in Italian).
  4. ↑ "Arianna Meloni e l'amore per Francesco Lollobrigida: "Ci siamo incontrati al partito. Nozze? Vedremo"". Today (in Italian). 16 November 2022.
  5. ↑ "La famiglia di Giorgia Meloni, dalla sorella Arianna alla mamma Anna". Sky TG24 (in Italian). 27 September 2022. Retrieved 23 April 2023.
  6. 1 2 Laura Pellegrini (21 October 2022). "Chi è Francesco Lollobrigida, il cognato di Giorgia Meloni al ministero dell'Agricoltura". Trend Online (in Italian). Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  7. ↑ "Francesco Lollobrigida". Corriere della Sera (in Italian). Retrieved 20 April 2023.
  8. ↑ "XVIII Legislatura. Lollobrigida Francesco - FDI" (in Italian). Italian Parliament. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  9. ↑ Barbie Latza Nadeau (19 April 2023). "Italian minister sparks fury for saying immigration leads to 'ethnic replacement'". CNN. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  10. ↑ Sofia Bettiza; Laura Gozzi (19 April 2023). "Italian outcry over Lollobrigida 'ethnic replacement' remarks". BBC News . Retrieved 19 April 2023.
  11. ↑ Amy Kazmin; Giuliana Ricozzi (16 November 2023). "Italy bans lab-grown meat". Financial Times . Retrieved 17 November 2023.
  12. ↑ Borrelli, Silva (7 August 2024). "Train Delays Disrupt Italian Business and Tourist". The Financial Times. Archived from the original on 7 August 2024. Retrieved 7 September 2024.
  13. ↑ Tondo, Lorenzo (22 November 2023). "Italian minister allegedly forced high-speed train to make unscheduled stop". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 6 September 2024.
  14. ↑ Hülsemann, Laura (23 November 2023). "Italian minister engineers unscheduled stop by public train". POLITICO. Retrieved 6 September 2024.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.