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POLITICS

These are Italy’s new ministers under Mario Draghi

Incoming Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi unveiled his cabinet on Friday, choosing a mix of veteran politicians and technocrats.

These are Italy's new ministers under Mario Draghi
Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Mario Draghi pose for a group photo with Italy's new Cabinet Ministers. Photo: AFP

Here are some of his new nominees, as well as those returning from the last government of Giuseppe Conte. 

Economy

Draghi has turned to one of Italy's foremost experts in public finances, with whom he has worked before, to head the all-important economy ministry. 

Daniele Franco, 67, is senior deputy governor at the Bank of Italy, where he spent much of his career and overlapped with Draghi when he was governor from 2005 to 2011. 

READ ALSO: The three biggest issues facing Italy's new government

The classical music fan was also an economic advisor at the European Commission's directorate general for economic affairs in the mid 1990s. 

Between 2013 and 2019, he held the post of Italy's state accountant general, leading scrutiny of the public spending — a job that earned him a number of enemies.

Luigi di Maio will carry on as foreign minister. Photo: AFP

Justice

Trailblazer Marta Cartabia, 57, was the first woman to preside over Italy's constitutional court and now becomes the country's first female justice minister. 

A judge and professor of constitutional law at the prestigious Bocconi University in Milan, Cartabia was elected president of the Constitutional Court in 2019.

Unanimously elected by her peers, Cartabia served at the helm of the highest court in Italy for constitutional matters until September last year. 

She noted at the time that although women made up 53 percent of the country's judges, they did not hold the top positions. 

Cartabia's name was floated by Italian media in the spring of 2018 as a potential prime minister when political parties struggled to form a government.

Ecology Transition

Renowned physicist Roberto Cingolani, 59, takes the helm of a newly created portfolio as minister for ecological transition.

The ministry — demanded by the Five Stars Movement, parliament's biggest group — is expected to manage the influx of green projects stemming from EU Recovery Funds. 

READ ALSO: How are Italy's prime ministers chosen?

Cingolani has been in charge of technological innovation at Italian aeronautics giant Leonardo since September 2019, after serving as scientific director of the Italian Institute of Technology in Genoa for four years.

He worked from 1988 to 1991 at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart under the direction of the Nobel winner in physics Klaus von Klitzing. 

Economic Development

Giancarlo Giorgetti is a powerful and long-standing political player in Matteo Salvini's far-right League.

A former deputy secretary of the party, he has held various roles since the early 1990s, with La Repubblica newspaper describing him as the representative of the moderate face of the party, with ties with the worlds of banking, finance and industry. 

Giorgetti served in outgoing premier Giuseppe Conte's first coalition government comprising the League and the populist Five Star Movement (M5S).

Health/Foreign/Interior/Culture

Draghi retains some key cabinet members from the prior government of Giuseppe Conte. They include: Roberto Speranza as health minister, Luigi Di Maio for foreign affairs, Luciana Lamorgese as interior minister, and Dario Franceschini for culture.

Roberto Speranza will continue to serve as health minister in Mario Draghi's new government. Photo: AFP

Speranza, 42, was one of the youngest members of the last cabinet, but the former member of the Democratic Party has generally won plaudits as health minister for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Italy during his term.

Di Maio, 34, rose to fame as the new head of the populist Five Stars Movement in 2017. Considered a moderate within the party, Di Maio served as deputy prime minister alongside far-right leader Matteo Salvini, in Conte's first government. 

As foreign minister, Di Maio has had to navigate Italy's relations with its former colony Libya, currently ravaged by civil war, and with Egypt, where an unsolved murder of an Italian citizen in Cairo has raised tensions between the two countries. 

Luciana Lamorgese, 67, an interior ministry veteran and former prefet in Venice and Milan, has spent much of her time handling Italy's migration policy. Replacing Salvini as interior minister in September 2019, Lamorgese was seen as a more moderate choice following the tenure of her predecessor, whose refusal to allow migrants to disembark on Italy's shores is now before the courts.

Dario Franceschini, 62, is a stalwart of the Democratic Party, and has served as culture minister since 2014, save for during Conte's first premiership. A former secretary of the party, Franceschini has written several novels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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EUROPEAN UNION

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Sunday she would stand in upcoming European Parliament elections, a move apparently calculated to boost her far-right party, although she would be forced to resign immediately.

Italian PM Meloni to stand in EU Parliament elections

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neo-Fascist roots, came top in Italy’s 2022 general election with 26 percent of the vote.

It is polling at similar levels ahead of the European elections on from June 6-9.

With Meloni heading the list of candidates, Brothers of Italy could exploit its national popularity at the EU level, even though EU rules require that any winner already holding a ministerial position must immediately resign from the EU assembly.

“We want to do in Europe exactly what we did in Italy on September 25, 2022 — creating a majority that brings together the forces of the right to finally send the left into opposition, even in Europe!” Meloni told a party event in the Adriatic city of Pescara.

In a fiery, sweeping speech touching briefly on issues from surrogacy and Ramadan to artificial meat, Meloni extolled her coalition government’s one-and-a-half years in power and what she said were its efforts to combat illegal immigration, protect families and defend Christian values.

After speaking for over an hour in the combative tone reminiscent of her election campaigns, Meloni said she had decided to run for a seat in the European Parliament.

READ ALSO: How much control does Giorgia Meloni’s government have over Italian media?

“I’m doing it because I want to ask Italians if they are satisfied with the work we are doing in Italy and that we’re doing in Europe,” she said, suggesting that only she could unite Europe’s conservatives.

“I’m doing it because in addition to being president of Brothers of Italy I’m also the leader of the European conservatives who want to have a decisive role in changing the course of European politics,” she added.

In her rise to power, Meloni, as head of Brothers of Italy, often railed against the European Union, “LGBT lobbies” and what she has called the politically correct rhetoric of the left, appealing to many voters with her straight talk.

“I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian” she famously declared at a 2019 rally.

She used a similar tone Sunday, instructing voters to simply write “Giorgia” on their ballots.

“I have always been, I am, and will always be proud of being an ordinary person,” she shouted.

EU rules require that “newly elected MEP credentials undergo verification to ascertain that they do not hold an office that is incompatible with being a Member of the European Parliament,” including being a government minister.

READ ALSO: Why is Italy’s government being accused of helping tax dodgers?

The strategy has been used before, most recently in Italy in 2019 by Meloni’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, who leads the far-right Lega party.

The EU Parliament elections do not provide for alliances within Italy’s parties, meaning that Brothers of Italy will be in direct competition with its coalition partners Lega and Forza Italia, founded by Silvio Berlusconi.

The Lega and Forza Italia are polling at about seven percent and eight percent, respectively.

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