Susanna Ceccardi (born 19 March 1987[1][2]) is an Italian politician. In May 2019,she was elected to the European Parliament.[3] She served as mayor of Cascina from June 2016[4] to June 2019.[5][6]
The family of her father (Roberto[7]) originated from the hamlet of Vaglie in the comune of Ligonchio and she is a distant cousin through her paternal grandfather of the singer Iva Zanicchi.[8][9][10] Francesco Ceccardi,brother of her paternal grandfather,died in the hamlet of Busana on the Apennine Mountains,killed by the army of the Italian Social Republic in January 1945 and is locally honored by a way-side cross with a plaque.[11][12]
Her family was left-wing but her parents moved their vote to the Northern League in the 1990s.[13]
She graduated at classical high school and she later enrolled at Law School at the University of Pisa,where she began her political activity as student representative.[14] She took all the exams but never graduated.[15]
Political career
Cascina
She was elected at the municipal council of Cascina in 2011 and she participated as a regular guest in the political talk show Announo on the national channel LA7.[16]
During the 2016 Italian local elections she obtained at the Cascina mayoral election 28.4% in the first round and 50.3% in the run-off,while her party got 21.3%.[18][19] Immigration was a core topic of the campaign.[13]
At the time her victory interrupted 70 years of left-wing local leadership,[20][4][21] and Cascina became the first large municipality won by Lega Nord Toscana in the region and the second in general after Bagni di Lucca in the 1990s.[22] in a region which is a traditional left stronghold.[13] She was also the only member of Lega Nord elected mayor in the whole region[23] before Siena,Pisa and Massa followed suit in the June 2018 local elections.[24]
Susanna Ceccardi's role was considered crucial for the elections in the local constituencies of her assessors Edoardo Ziello and Rosellina Sbrana in March 2018 to the Italian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate,respectively,and for the victory of the right-wing candidate Michele Conti at the mayoral election in the bigger neighboring comune of Pisa a few months laters in the 2018 Italian local elections.[5] In Autumn 2018 she was appointed special commissioner (head) of the party in Tuscany.[25]
Susanna Ceccardi with Matteo Salvini in May 2019 at an election rally for the following European and municipal elections,in Montecatini Terme.
In April 2019,she became an official candidate for her party at the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy[28][29][30] She was elected with 48,239 preferences.[31] becoming the youngest MEP of her party.[15] Her former deputy Dario Rollo became mayor after she accepted her role of MEP.[6]
Expedition in Spain during COVID-19 pandemics
During the COVID-19 pandemic,she organized with party colleagues Gian Marco Centinaio (former minister of agriculture) and Gianna Gambaccini (a doctor and local assessore in Pisa) a "rescue expedition" traveling by bus from Italy to Barcelona where they collected 46 Italian citizens (mostly from Tuscany.[32]) blocked in the Canary Islands with no direct flight to Italy because of the increasing local travel restrictions and reduction of flights and routes.[33][34][35] The tourists were visited by Gambaccini before the start of the travel,and equipped with protective masks.[36][37]
Ceccardi stated she undertook the initiative after not receiving specific reply from the Italian authorities.[33] The Italian Minister of Foreign AffairsLuigi Di Maio later asked the rescue mission to be stopped when the bus was already in France.
The initiative was criticized by the left parties as unnecessary,but also by other local politicians of Brothers of Italy.[38][39]
2020 Tuscan regional elections
Eugenio Giani with Susanna Ceccardi (top candidates for the upcoming regional elections) at the July 2020 electoral debate in the main building of La Nazione in Florence.
After the good performance of the possible allied parties at the 2019 European elections,Ceccardi declared herself as a possible candidate for the president of Tuscany at the incoming regional elections of 2020.[41] However,possible allies criticized the weak performance of the center-right coalition at the runoff votings of the 2019 municipal elections under her strategical leadership [42] and criticisms of her activism emerged also inside her own party.[17]
In March 2020,Ceccardi was proposed as candidate for the center-right coalition to the 2020 Tuscan regional election.[34][43] The candidature was formalized for the whole center-right coalition in June 2020,when the date of the election was confirmed after the COVID-19 lockdown.[44]
Political views
She has been described as an example of younger Italian politicians supporting a more critical view of the European Union especially compared with the older right-wing officeholders of the previous decades.[45]
In 2016,she gave honorary citizenship to Magdi Cristiano Allam,a former Muslim who converted to Christianity and is noted for his criticism of Islamic extremism.[23] She opposes the construction of mosques and,in exchange for the celebration of the Eid al-Fitr in a public space by the local Senegalese community,she required that they "firmly condemned" all acts of violence induced by Islamic fundamentalism.[46] Ceccardi consider that "regulating immigration is a moderate position"[20]
In March 2019,she made public that she is expecting a baby with her partner Andrea Barabotti,[13][48] a member of the Lega from Massa,[49] due in September 2019.[50][10] She expressed the possibility to name her future daughter Kinzica after Kinzica de' Sismondi,a medieval heroine who according to the legend it is said to have defended the town of Pisa from the invasion of the Saracens.[30][10] Kinzika was born in Pisa on September,28th[49]
↑ Matteo Salvini, who at time was only leader of the Northern League, gave himself news of her victory to the national audience during the television late night show Porta a Porta.[5]
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