Early career
Fassino registered with the Italian Communist Youth Federation of Turin in 1968. In 1975,he was elected a Member of the City Council of the Piedmont regional capital,a position he held 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;in 1994,he was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies. Re-elected in 1996,he was appointed in 1998 as Minister for Foreign Commerce in the government headed by Massimo D'Alema. Between 2000 and 2001,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 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. [2]
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. [3]
Secretary of Democrats of the Left
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. [4] 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. [5]
