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(In alphabetical
order)
Franco BASSANINI
Ministro della Funzione Pubblica / Minister for the
Public Function
Bassanini (born on 9 May 1940 in Milan) of the Left Democrats
retains the portfolio assigned to him in the second D'Alema cabinet, having
served as Cabinet undersecretary in D'Alema's first
administration.
Professor of constitutional law,
Bassanini is credited with making great strides towards devolution of power and
streamlining of government during his red-tape-slashing term under Prodi at the
civil service (public administration) ministry.
A Catholic
youth leader at university, Bassanini worked in the late '70s on transferring
powers to the regions - moves that were effectively defused by central
government until recently.
Bassanini was one of the leaders
of the left wing of the Socialist party until 1981, when he and other dissidents
were purged for criticising the leadership style and policies of
Craxi.
In 1983 he joined the Independent Left caucus,
heralding a move towards the then-Communist, now Left Democrat
party.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy, Washington)
Katia BELLILLO
Ministro per le Pari Opportunitą / Minister for
Equal Opportunities
Katia
Bellillo (born on 17 February 1951 in Foligno) is a member of the Italian
Communist party headed by Armando Cossutta. She served as regional affairs
minister in both of D'Alema's cabinets and moves to the equal opportunities post
formerly held by another female politician, Laura Balbo of the
Greens.
Bellillo began her career as a provincial women's
rights official in the Italian Communist Party in 1973 and continued to handle
women's issues until her long experience in local government in Umbria led to
other posts.
In 1995 she was named deputy head
of the province of Perugia with a wide-ranging brief covering health and social
problems, culture, education and wildlife protection.
(Source: The Embassy
of Italy, Washington)
Pierluigi BERSANI
Ministro dei Trasporti e Navigazione / Minister of
Transport and Merchant Marine
Bersani of the Left Democrats retains the Transport portfolio he
was given in D'Alema's second cabinet. Before serving as industry minister in
the Prodi and the first D'Alema government, Bersani had spent the previous 15
years representing the Communist Party in local politics. In 1993 he took over
the top regional government job in Emilia Romagna when the previous head
resigned.
In the 1995 regional elections, he led the winning
center-left alliance in the same region.
Bersani, born
on 29 September 1951 in Bettola , is a philosophy graduate. He is married and
has two children.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Enzo BIANCO
Ministro dell'Interno / Minister of Interior
Bianco stays on as interior minister, having been assigned to the post by
D'Alema when he formed his second government, on December 22. The mayor of
Catania and head of the national association of mayors ANCI, Enzo Bianco joined
Prodi's Democrats after being an activist with the Italian Republican Party
(PRI). A lawyer and an expert in international finance, Bianco administered the
eastern Sicilian city through what was dubbed the "Catania Spring" in which the
city for the most part shed its Mafia image and its residents returned to its
streets and cafes.
Aside from being the first
directly elected mayor of Catania, Bianco has also served in the Sicilian
regional assembly and the Lower House in Rome. He was active in the referendum
movement of Mario Segni and since 1997 has headed the Italian delegation in the
European Union Regions Commission.
Bianco is
married and has a daughter and his hobbies are classical music and theatre as
well as Sicilian cuisine.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Willer BORDON
Ministri dell'Ambiente / Minister of
Environment
A
member of the Democrats, the small party founded by Prodi before becoming
European Commission President, Willer Bordon served as public works minister in
D'Alema's second cabinet and will now take over the environment portfolio from
Edo Ronchi.
Bordon was born in Muggia, near
Trieste, on 16 January 1949 and served as its mayor for eleven years,
acting also as head of the transport consortium for the province of Trieste. He
is also a former editor of the ANCI publication.
Bordon was
elected to Parliament in 1987 and was returned to the House in 1992, '94 and
'96. He was one of the founding members of Segni's referendum movement as well
as the Democratic Alliance in 1992, who then joined the center-left Olive Tree
coalition in 1995. Bordon was Culture undersecretary in the Prodi government and
one of the original members of Prodi's Democrats.
He is married
to theatre actress Rosa Ferraiolo and has a son and a
daughter.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Salvatore CARDINALE
Ministro delle Comunicazioni / Minister of Communications
Cardinale,
born on 20 June 1948 in Mussomeli (Caltanisetta), retains the posts and
telecommunications portfolio, which he held in both D'Alema
administrations.
Cardinale was elected in 1996 in
the party lists of the ex-Christian Democrat center-right CCD, but was persuaded
by former president Francesco Cossiga to join his UDR drive to replace the
Berlusconi-led opposition with a more moderate center-right force. He then
joined the small centrist party UDEUR of Clemente Mastella.
Cardinale is a law graduate who, before joining government, worked as a company
manager.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Ottaviano DEL
TURCO
Ministro delle Finanze
/ Minister of Finance
Ottaviano Del Turco managed the Socialist Youth Federation in Rome from 1962 to
'65 and joined the Cgil trade union confederation in time for the "hot autumn"
of 1968 to go on to become the assistant secretary general of the national
metalworkers' union Fiom under the Cgil by 1977.
After
suffering a setback in Fiom's dispute with Fiat in 1980, Del Turco moved over to
the parent organization at the side of leader Luciano Lama. In 1984, with the St
Valentine's decree issued by the govenment led by Socialist Bettino Craxi aimed
at dismantling the wage-inflation indexation mechanism, the Cgil split between
the Communist majority and the Socialists.
Del Turco made
the break in 1992, after serving as Cgil assistant secretary general under Lama
and Bruno Trentin, who accused him of pursuing political, rather than labor
union, logic.
With his Socialist Party in
disarray under the hammer blows of Milan-based investigations into business and
political corruption, Del Turno held the party helm from June 1993 to June 1994
and was elected to the Lower House in March 1994.
He won a
Senate seat for Lamberto Dini's Italian Renewal Party in 1996 and has since
returned to the Socialist fold while heading the National Anti-Mafia Commission,
a post he took over in December 1996.
Ottaviano Del
Turco was born in Collelongo (L'Aquila) on November 7th,
1944.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy, Washington)
Tullio DE MAURO
Ministro della Pubblica Istruzione / Minister of Education
Tullio De Mauro, born in 1932 in Torre Annunziata (Naples), is one of the two
technicians brought into the cabinet by Amato. De Mauro is a full professor and
head of the University of Rome Department of the Science of Language. He is
generally considered the nation's leading scholar in Italian on the basis of his
fundamental work on the language, Storia linguistica dell'Italia
Unita'.
Since 1997, De Mauro has been a member of the
national commission formulating new syllabuses for Italian schools and has
edited and translated F. De Saussure's Corso di linguistica
generale.
He has also written for the review Riforma della
Scuola, was behind the initiative for publication of a newspaper Due Parole for
children with language learning difficulties and takes active part in television
debate and the publication of manuals for teachers.
Tullio De Mauro is the brother of reporter Mauro De Mauro who was abducted in
September 1970 in Catania, Sicily, while writing a series for the newspaper
L'Ora on the death of Enrico Mattei, the founder of the Eni petrochemicals group
who died in a plane crash in 1962.
Twenty-five
years later, Mafia state's witnesses confirmed that Mauro De Mauro had been
kidnapped and slain by the Mafia.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Lamberto DINI
Ministro degli Affari Esteri / Minister for Foreign Affairs
Lamberto Dini was born in Florence on March 1,
1931; Degree in Economics summa cum laude, University of Florence
(1955);
Postgraduate studies at the Universities of Minnesota and Michigan
(1957-59); recipient of a Stringher Scholarship of the Bank of Italy, of a
Fulbright Scholarship of the U.S. Government, and of a Ford Foundation Research
Fellowship; Official of the International Monetary Fund
(1959-75); Executive Director of the International Monetary Fund (1976-80), elected
by Italy, Spain (1976-78), Greece, Portugal and
Malta; Director General of the Bank of Italy (October 1979-May
1994); Member of the Monetary Committee of the European Economic Communities
(1980-May 1994); Chairman of the Deputies of the Group of Ten (October 1981-May
1994); Member of the Board of Directors (1989-May 1994) and Vice-President
(September 1993-May 1994) of the Bank for International
Settlements; Member of the Foundation Board of the International Center for Monetary
and Banking Studies, Geneva, from 1980, and President,
1992-1995; Minister of the Treasury in the Government of Prime Minister Berlusconi
(May 1994-January 1995); Governor for Italy in the International Monetary Fund, the European
Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the
Inter American Development Bank (May 1994-May 1996); President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of the Treasury, from
January 17, 1995 to May 17, 1996. Also Minister of Justice ad interim, Oct. 19,
1995-Feb. 16, 1996; Minister of Foreign Affairs since May 18,
1996.
(Source: The Ministry for Foreign
Affairs)
Dini continues as foreign minister after two and a half years on the job under
Romano Prodi and then 18 months with D'Alema. He came to the post after serving
as premier in the 'technicians' government (January 1995 to February 1996)
installed after the collapse of the centre-right Silvio Berlusconi
administration.
His entry into politics came in
April 1994 when Berlusconi asked him to take the treasury portfolio in his
government. Shortly before the 1996 elections he founded the centrist Italian
Renewal party. Dini, 69, is married and has a daughter. After graduating in
economics from Florence university he continued his studies in the US and stayed
there to start work at the International Monetary Fund. He later rose to the
rank of central co-director.
In 1979 he returned to his native
country as number two at the Bank of Italy.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Piero FASSINO
Ministro della Giustizia / Minister of Justice
Fassino, of the Left Democrats, served as Foreign Trade Minister in both of
D'Alema's cabinets. One of the main architects of Italy's Ostpolitik during his
recent time as foreign undersecretary, the reputed workaholic Fassino put his
eastern European and Balkan expertise to good use in advancing Italy's trade
ties with developing parts of Europe - while also fostering its Mediterranean
policy.
Fassino was already a leading figure in the old
Italian Communist Party when the Berlin Wall fell and he played a major role in
the party's transformation into a social democratic party.
Elected MP for the first time in 1994, he has served on several international
bodies including the Council of Europe and the Western European Union - where he
was deputy head of the parliamentary assembly and rapporteur on former
Yugoslavia. Fassino held a wide range of briefs in the foreign ministry,
including relations with the European Union and the OSCE, emigration and
Italians Abroad, but became known to the wider public for his expert comments on
Balkan and Eastern European issues.
Fassino was born in Avigliano
(Turin) on October 7th, 1949.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Enrico LETTA
Ministro dell'industria, del commercio e
dell'artigianato / Minister of Industry, Commerce and
Crafts
One of the rising stars of the
People's Party and a pro-European whose enthusiasm has been borne out by
published works, Enrico Letta retains the industry portfolio but also takes over
the foreign trade one previously held by Fassino.
Letta served
as minister for European Union affairs in the first D'Alema executive. Oddly
enough, he is the nephew of Berlusconi aide Gianni Letta but dared to incur his
uncle's displeasure by sticking with the Christian Democrats' more progressive
descendant, of which he is deputy secretary.
Enrico Letta
was born in Pisa on August 20th, 1966. After spending his school years in
Strasbourg, Letta graduated from Pisa, Italy's most prestigious university, and
went on to complete a PH.D. there in European Community law. From 1991 to 1995
he was leader of the young European People's Party. He also served as
secretary-general of the Treasury ministry's euro committee in 1996-97. He
became joint deputy head of his party, alongside Dario Franceschini, early last
year. Author of two books on European policy, North-East Passage and
Euro-Yes, he heads an independent think tank on law-making,
Arel.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy, Washington)
Agazio LOIERO
Ministro per gli Affari Regionali /
Minister for Regional Affairs
A
representative of Mastella's UDEUR, Loiero served as Culture undersecretary in
the first D'Alema government and minister for relations with parliament in the
second one.
He takes over the regional
affairs portfolio from Katia Bellillo, who was moved to equal
opportunities. Loiero entered politics with the Christian Democrats for
whom he was elected to the city council in Catanzaro, his adopted home, in 1980
and later became Christian Democrat provincial secretary.
Loiero was elected to Parliament in 1987, first
serving in the House and later the Senate. He was a member of the bicameral
commission for institutional reform, chaired by D'Alema, and in the Senate
served on the Rai watchdog and foreign affairs committees.
Loiero was born in Santa Severina, near
Crotone, on January 14th, 1940. He is married with two
children.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Antonio MACCANICO
Ministro
delle Riforme Istituzionali / Minister for Institutional
Reforms
Called by D'Alema last June to take the reform portfolio, which the premier had
previously held after Amato moved to the Treasury, Maccanico of the Republicans
came with ample government experience having served, from 1988 to 1991, as both
minister for regional affairs and institutional problems in the De Mita and
Andreotti governments.
In 1996, then-head of State
Scalfaro asked him to form a government but Maccanico could not muster enough
strength in Parliament and returned his mandate. As a consequence, new elections
were held.
Maccanico's institutional career began in 1947 as a
bureaucrat at the House where he rose to the post of secretary general. He was
then called to the presidential Quirinale Palace by Sandro Pertini to serve as
the head of state's general secretary, a post he also held under Francesco
Cossiga, before his appointment as chairman of Mediobanca in
1987.
Born in Avellino in 1924, he was a long-time member
of the Republican Party, on whose ticket he was elected to the Senate in 1992,
and also served as cabinet undersecretary in the Ciampi
government.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Sergio MATTARELLA
Ministro della Difesa / Minister of Defence
Mattarella of the People's Party retains the defence portfolio, which he was
given by D'Alema in December, having previously served as deputy premier in
D'Alema's first cabinet, formed in October 1998.
A former
Christian Democrat minister who hammered out Italy's compromise 75%
first-past-the-post, 25% proportional electoral law, Mattarella, 59, had a
distinguished career in the Christian Democratic party where he rose to the
deputy leadership in 1990-92.
As education minister in the
sixth Andreotti-led government of 1989-91, he was one of the party leftwingers
who resigned their post when a media law accused of protecting Berlusconi's
near-monopoly was passed. He was also editor of the party newspaper Il Popolo
(The People). Mattarella has continued to play a leading role in the People's
Party despite his association with an electoral law accused of betraying a
popular referendum by perpetuating the existence, and disproportionate clout, of
smaller parties.
Mattarella was born in Palermo on
July 23rd, 1941.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Gianni MATTIOLI
Ministro delle Politiche Comunitarie /
Minister for European Union Policy
Gianni Francesco
Mattioli was born in Genoa in 1940.
He took his degree in physics and
is a professor in mathematical physics at Rome's La Sapienza University, where
he previously did research in applied mechanics and mathematical models
regarding environmental problems.
Mattioli has been an active
campaigner for environmental protection and against nuclear power and was first
elected to the House in 1987, when he became a member of the Budget, Treasury
and Programming Commission.
In 1992, he was re-elected MP and made Number Two in
the Environment, Territory and Public Works Commission.
He was re-elected in
both 1994 and 1996, when he became undersecretary to the Ministry of Public
Works in the government of Romano Prodi, a post which he kept in the two
subsequent D'Alema administrations.
(Source:
ANSA)
Giovanna MELANDRI
Ministro per i Beni e le Attivitą Culturali /
Minister of Cultural
Heritage
One
of the leading lights of the younger and more cosmopolitan generation of Left
Democrats, Melandri held this post in both of D'Alema's
cabinets.
She is a former environmentalist who entered the
spotlight as her party's spokesperson on media issues.
Melandri was born in New York in 1962 and wrote her university thesis on Ronald
Reagan's tax reform. In her first term she had the job of turning the ministry
from a passive curator of the world's biggest and most endangered heritage
storehouse into a new superministry which aims to promote and defend it, also by
bringing films, theater, sports and other cultural events under her wing. She
has one child.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Nerio NESI
Ministro dei Lavori Pubblici / Minister of Public Works
Nesi,
the chairman of the Lower House Production Committee, worked for the Rai public
radio and television broadcaster and Olivetti before beginning a banking career
which led him to the office of chairman of Banca Nazionale del Lavoro in 1978,
the nation's largest public bank at the time.
He quit BNL in
1989 in the wake of a scandal surrounding unauthorized loans to Iraq from the
Atlanta, U.S. branch, though it was shown Nesi was not involved in the
case.
Following years as a militant of the left with the
old Socialist Party, from 1961 to 1990, Nesi returned to the arena in Communist
Refoundation Party in 1995 and won a seat in the Lower House in 1996. With the
split in Refoundation ranks over backing the Prodi government in 1998, Nesi went
with the newly-formed Party of Italian Communists.
In
parliament, Nesi has been committed to economic development compatible with the
defense of the welfare state and to a privatization policy which does not ignore
the public interest.
Nerio Nesi was born in Bologna in
1925.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy, Washington)
Alfonso PECORARO
SCANIO
Pecoraro Scanio in Salerno on March
13th, 1959. He is a lawyer, a member of the Greens Party leadership since 1995
and a militant environmentalist with membership in the WWF, Italia Nostra and
Legambiente.
He began his political career as
a Radical but moved to the Greens with the foundation of the Greens Federation
in 1982 where he began rising through the southern Campania region's municipal,
provincial and regional councils. He was first elected to the Lower House in
1992.
Pecoraro Scanio has also taken up justice issues and
the fight against political corruption and the financing of political
parties.
In June 1996, at the beginning of the present
legislature, he was elected to chair the Lower House Agriculture
Committee.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Cesare SALVI
Ministro del Lavoro / Minister of Labour
Salvi
retains his post as labour minister. Called in last June to take the Labour
portfolio after the resignation of Antonio Bassolino, who returned to be
full-time mayor of Naples, Cesare Salvi left his post as Left Democrat Senate
whip. A professor of law, who has also taught at Yale University, Salvi entered
active politics fairly late in his career, being first elected to Parliament in
1992 to then move to the Senate in 1994.
In Parliament,
Salvi worked with Sergio Mattarella in drafting Italy's current electoral law
and was one of D'Alema's top aides in the bicameral reform
commission.
Cesare Salvi was born in Lecce on
June 9th, 1948.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Patrizia TOIA
Ministro per i Rapporti con il Parlamento /
Minister for Parliamentary
Relations
A
member of the Italian People's Party, Toia served as Foreign undersecretary in
the Prodi and first D'Alema government, rising to European Union Policy Minister
in the second D'Alema cabinet.
Born in 1950 in Pogliano
Milanese, she joined the Christian Democratic party in the early 1970s and in
1989 became responsible for social services for the Region of Lombardy. Toia
then also took over the health portfolio in 1991 and became MP replacing Roberto
Formigoni, when he was elected as president of the Region of
Lombardy.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Livia TURCO
Ministro per la Solidarietą Sociale / Minister for Social Solidarity
Livia
Turco of the Left Democrats retains the post she held in both D'Alema
administrations and under Prodi. The one-time Communist women's rights leader
was elected to parliament for the first time in 1987 and set to work on issues
such as raising women's labour rights and pay, making it easier for women to
work and raise families, and sexual violence.
In 1995, as
one of the leading women in the Left Democrat party, she was named head of the
national commission for equal opportunities, and became one of three women
members of the Prodi government a year later.
Livia Turco
was born in Cuneo on February 13th, 1955.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Umberto VERONESI
Ministro della Sanitą / Minister of Health
Veronesi, another technician introduced to the cabinet, is a pioneer in the
fight against cancer in Italy as head of the National Cancer Institute in Milan
for 18 years and, since 1994, the director of the European Institute of Oncology
in the same city.
He is also the coordinator for
the National Operative Force on Breast Carcinoma, an expert for the World Health
Organization as chairman of the WHO International Melanoma Group and founder of
the European School of Oncology.
Veronesi has
gone on record saying that malign tumors are "curable" and is confident that
genetic research will lead to prevention and cure. Under his leadership,
until 1994, the National Cancer Institute became one of Europe's most
prestigious oncological centers.
In 1993,
Veronesi became a member of a national commission named to combat cancer and
four years later led another commission of experts picked to judge the
controversial Di Bella therapy. In 1995, he was among 12 medical
authorities who signed an appeal for the legalization of soft drugs, such as
Indian canapa, "for the creation of an effective juridical context for control
and authorization."
Umberto Veronesi was born in
Milan on November 28th, 1925.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Vincenzo VISCO
Ministro del Tesoro / Minister of Treasury
Visco
of the Left Democrats served as finance minister in both of the cabinets formed
by D'Alema and in the government of Romano Prodi (1996-98) and will now replace
Amato at the Treasury.
Visco has been a member of
parliament since 1983 when he was elected as a Communist Party deputy. Before
becoming minister he headed the Senate finance committee, was deputy chairman of
the same committee in the Lower House and was economics spokesman for the PDS
and later DS.
Visco is married and has two
children. He graduated in law but later specialized in economics at Berkeley and
York, England. He was nominated as finance minister by Ciampi in 1993 but
resigned the next day along with other PDS ministers in a protest over
parliament's vote not to allow legal proceedings against then Socialist leader
Bettino Craxi.
Vincenzo Visco was born in Foggia
on March 18th, 1942.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy,
Washington)
Ortensio ZECCHINO
Ministro dell'Universitą e della Ricerca Scientifica
e Tecnologica / Minister of Universities, Scientific
and Technological Research
A
former Christian Democrat, law professor Zecchino of the People's Party retains
the portfolio he held in both of the D'Alema's
administrations.
Zecchino rose through the
Christian Democrat ranks in Campania, serving as regional chief from 1984-87. He
was elected to European Parliament in 1979, and to the Senate in 1987, where he
has sat ever since, latterly for the People's Party.
He
teaches history of penal law at the University of Naples.
Ortensio Zecchino was born in Asmara (Eritrea) on April 20th,
1943.
(Source: The Embassy of Italy, Washington)
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