Piero Fassino | |
---|---|
38th Mayor of Turin | |
In office 16 May 2011 –20 June 2016 | |
Preceded by | Sergio Chiamparino |
Succeeded by | Chiara Appendino |
Minister of Justice | |
In office 26 April 2000 –11 June 2001 | |
Prime Minister | Giuliano Amato |
Preceded by | Oliviero Diliberto |
Succeeded by | Roberto Castelli |
Minister of Foreign Trade | |
In office 21 October 1998 –26 April 2000 | |
Prime Minister | Romano Prodi |
Preceded by | Augusto Fantozzi |
Succeeded by | Enrico Letta |
Personal details | |
Born | Avigliana,Italy | 7 October 1949
Political party | PCI (1968–1991) PDS (1991–1998) DS (1998–2007) PD (since 2007) |
Spouse | Anna Maria Serafini |
Alma mater | University of Turin |
Piero Franco Rodolfo Fassino (born 7 October 1949) is an Italian politician with the Democratic Party. He was Mayor of Turin from 2011 until 2016 and is a former national secretary of the Democrats of the Left party. [1]
Fassino was born in Avigliana,Piedmont (province of Turin),in a traditional socialist family. His father Eugenio was a partisan,commander of the 41st Garibaldi Brigade,and his paternal grandfather Piero was beaten to death by the Italian Fascists in 1944 because he did not want to reveal his son's hideout,while his maternal grandfather Cesare Grisa was one of the founders of the Italian Socialist Party. He graduated in Political Sciences.
Fassino registered with the Youth Communist Federation of Turin in 1968,becoming their secretary three years later. In 1975,he was elected as a Member of the City Council of the Piedmont regional capital,a position he remained in for ten years. From 1985 to 1990 he was Provincial Councillor,also in Turin. He was also secretary of the provincial Italian Communist Party (PCI) federation of Turin from 1983 to 1987,when he was elected as a member of the National Secretary's Office of the party,first as the Secretary's Office Coordinator,then as Responsible of Organization,during the period where the party was transformed from the PCI into the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS).
From 1991 to 1996,Fassino was International Secretary of the new party;his first election to the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house of the Italian parliament) was in 1994. Re-elected in 1996,he was appointed in 1998 as Minister for Foreign Commerce in the government headed by Massimo D'Alema. From 2000,he was Minister of Justice in the Giuliano Amato government. [1] Candidate as vice-premier of The Olive Tree coalition in a ticket with former Rome Mayor Francesco Rutelli for the 2001 general elections in Italy won by the House of Freedoms rival coalition,he was still re-elected as a Member of Parliament.
In 2001,during the National Party Congress of the Democrats of the Left,Fassino was elected as secretary (a position of leader in Italian political parties). He was then re-elected in February 2005,during the party congress.
In 2003,Fassino and other high-ranking party members –including Romano Prodi,Lamberto Dini and Walter Veltroni –were accused of taking millions of pounds in backhanders when state-run Telecom Italia bought a 29% stake in Telekom Serbia in 1997. [2] During his time in office,Fassino asserted that Il Giornale ,a right-wing newspaper,published confidential wiretap transcripts shortly before the 2006 election to create the impression that he had exercised improper pressure in the attempted takeover of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro by insurer Unipol in 2005. In 2013,a court awarded 80,000 euros in damages to Fassino for the incident. [3]
In addition to his role in parliament,Fassino was a member of Italian delegation to the Assembly of the Western European Union from 2006 until 2011,where he served as chairman of the Committee on Political Affairs and as rapporteur for the Western Balkans. [4]
From 2007 until 2010,Fassino served as the European Union's special envoy for Myanmar,appointed by the Union’s High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy,Javier Solana. [5]
Fassino served as Mayor of Turin from 2011 until 2016. In the 2016 elections,he was defeated by Chiara Appendino,who overturned an 11-point gap after the first round to win 55 per cent of the vote. [6]
Fassino has also served as a member of the Italian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1994 until 1996;from 2006 until 2011;and since 2018. [7] As member of the Democratic Party,he is part of the Socialists,Democrats and Greens Group. In the Assembly,he serves on the Committee on the Honouring of Obligations and Commitments by Member States of the Council of Europe (since 2018);the Committee on Political Affairs and Democracy (since 2018);and the Sub-Committee on the Middle East and the Arab World (since 2019). He also serves as the Assembly's co-rapporteur on Serbia (alongside Ian Liddell-Grainger) [8] and Libya. [9]
Fassino received the America Award from the Italy-USA Foundation in 2010.
Fassino is married to Anna Maria Serafini,who was elected to the Italian Senate (the second chamber of the Italian parliament) in 2006. He considers himself Roman Catholic. [11]
The Democrats of the Left was a social-democratic political party in Italy. Positioned on the centre-left,the DS,successor of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and the Italian Communist Party,was formed in 1998 upon the merger of the PDS with several minor parties. A member of The Olive Tree coalition,the DS was successively led by Massimo D'Alema,Walter Veltroni,and Piero Fassino,and merged with Democracy is Freedom –The Daisy and a number of minor centre-left parties to form the Democratic Party in October 2007.
Gary Titley is a British Labour Party politician and a former Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North West of England.
Achille Leone Occhetto is an Italian political figure. He served as the last secretary-general of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) between 1988 and 1991,and was the first leader of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS),the parliamentary socialist successor of the PCI,from 1991 to 1994.
Theodora "Dora" Bakoyanni is a Greek politician. From 2006 to 2009 she was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece,the highest position ever to have been held by a woman in the Cabinet of Greece at the time;she was also Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe in 2009. Previously she was the Mayor of Athens from 2003 to 2006,the first female mayor in the city's history,and the first woman to serve as mayor of a city hosting the Olympic Games. She also served as Minister for Culture of Greece from 1992 to 1993.
Giovanni Berlinguer was an Italian politician,humanist,and professor of social medicine.
Juan Fernando López Aguilar is a Spanish jurist and politician of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) who has been serving as a member of the European Parliament since 2009. He served as Minister of Justice in the government of JoséLuis Rodríguez Zapatero. He also represented Las Palmas in the Congress of Deputies between 1996 and 2007 and between 2008 and 2009.
Robert Goebbels is a former politician in Luxembourg,and a former Member of the European Parliament for the Luxembourg Socialist Workers' Party,part of the Party of European Socialists.
Marie-Arlette Carlotti is a French politician of the Socialist Party (PS) who has been serving as a member of the French Senate since 2020,representing Bouches-du-Rhône. She previously was a Member of the European Parliament from south-east of France.
Edite de Fátima Santos Marreiros Estrela,GCIH is a Portuguese politician of the Socialist Party. She is currently the First Vice-President of the Assembly of the Republic.
Walter Veltroni is an Italian writer,film director,journalist,and politician. He served as the first leader of the Democratic Party within the Italian centre-left opposition until his resignation on 17 February 2009. He also served as mayor of Rome from June 2001 to February 2008.
Hannes Swoboda is an Austrian social democratic politician who served as a Member of the European Parliament from 1996 until 2014. Within the Parliament,he represents the Social Democratic Party of Austria and from January 2012 to June 2014,he was also the President of the group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats.
The Democratic Party of the Left was a democratic-socialist and social-democratic political party in Italy. Founded in February 1991 as the post-communist evolution of the Italian Communist Party,the party was the largest in the Alliance of Progressives and The Olive Tree coalitions. In February 1998,the party merged with minor parties to form Democrats of the Left. At its peak in 1991,the party had a membership of 989,708;by 1998,it was reduced to 613,412.
Titus Corlățean is a Romanian politician and diplomat,former Minister of Justice and of Foreign Affairs. He is a member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD),part of the Party of European Socialists,and was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for Brașov County in the 2004 elections.
Massimo D'Alema is an Italian politician and journalist who was the 53rd prime minister of Italy from 1998 to 2000. He was Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2008. D'Alema also served for a time as national secretary of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). Earlier in his career,D'Alema was a member of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) and was the first former Communist party member to become prime minister of a NATO country and the only former PCI prime minister of Italy. Due to his first name and for his dominant position in the left-wing coalitions during the Second Republic,he is referred to as Leader Maximo. He is also the author of several books.
Franziska Katharina Brantner is a German politician of the Green Party who has been serving as a member of the German Parliament since 2013.
Graziano Delrio is an Italian medical doctor and politician,who served in the government of Italy as Minister of Infrastructure and Transport from 2 April 2015 to 1 June 2018. He previously served as the state secretary to Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. He was minister for regional affairs and autonomy from 28 April 2013 to 22 February 2014 as part of the Letta Cabinet. He also served as the mayor of Reggio Emilia.
Kati Piri is a Hungarian-born Dutch politician serving as a member of the House of Representatives since 2021. A member of the Labour Party (PvdA),she previously was a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) within the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats from 2014 until 2021.
Johann David Wadephul is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) who has been a member of the German Parliament since 2009.
Andreas Schieder is an Austrian politician who has been a Member of the European Parliament since 2019.
Diego Novelli is an Italian politician. He is a former mayor of Turin.