Claudio Martelli

Claudio Martelli (2012)

Claudio Martelli (born September 23, 1943 in Gessate , province of Milan ) is an Italian journalist and politician of the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) and the Nuovo Partito Socialista Italiano , which, among other things, is a member of the Chamber of Deputies ( Camera dei deputati ), member of the European Parliament , Vice- President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Justice of Italy .

Life

University degree, party official and member of parliament

Martelli attended, like Bettino Craxi and later Gerry Scotti, the Giosuè Carducci high school in Milan , where the writer and journalist Massimo Fini was one of his classmates. After graduating from high school, he studied philosophy and after completing his studies became a research assistant at the Philosophical Faculty of the University of Milan .

He began his political career in the Partito Socialista Italiano (PSI) in 1966 in local politics in Milan, before he was brought to the party headquarters in Rome in 1976 by Bettino Craxi, who shortly before had become General Secretary of PSI .

In the election of June 12, 1979 he was elected for the first time for the PSI as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, in which he initially represented the constituency of Mantova until June 1987 and then until April 14, 1994 the constituency of Palermo . During his long membership in parliament he was a member of the standing committees for teaching and fine arts, for internal affairs and for foreign affairs.

At the PSI's congress in Palermo in 1981, he became one of the party's two vice secretaries alongside Valdo, and thus Craxis’s deputy. At the following party congress in Verona in 1984 , he became the sole deputy secretary of the PSI.

MEP, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Justice

In the European elections in 1984 he was also elected a member of the 2nd European Parliament and was a member of it until 1989.

On July 23, 1989 Claudio Martelli was appointed by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti as Vice-Prime Minister ( Vicepresidente del Consiglio dei Ministri ) as well as Minister of Justice ( Ministro della Giustizia ) in his sixth cabinet and also held these offices in his seventh government until June 28, 1992 He then took over the post of Justice Minister in the first cabinet of Prime Minister Giuliano Amato .

Tangentopoli scandal, Mani pulite investigation and resignation as minister

During his term of office, the so-called Tangentopoli scandal occurred in which the then prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro exposed a system of corruption, abuse of office and illegal party financing in February 1992 in Milan. After this scandal and the subsequent revelations in the course of the Manipulite investigations led to massive allegations against the PSI and other parties, Martelli applied for his successor after the resignation of PSI General Secretary Craxi in February 1993.

When he was then accused of being involved in the scandals surrounding the Milanese Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s , he resigned as Minister of Justice on February 10, 1993 and also renounced the candidacy for the post of PSI General Secretary, which then temporarily until May 1993 by Giorgio Benvenuto and then by Ottaviano Del Turco .

However, he remained a member of the Camera dei deputati, where he left the PSI on April 28, 1993 and joined the Federalista Europeo group led by Marco Pannella .

Withdrawal from politics and renewed membership in the European Parliament

After leaving parliament on April 14, 1994, he initially worked in the private sector and in 1996 founded the aid organization Opera and the citizens' organization Società Aperta . In 1997 he became editor-in-chief of the cultural and political magazine MondOperaio, founded in 1948 on the initiative of Pietro Nenni . In 1998 he was also an advisor to the Minister for Social Solidarity, Livia Turco , on immigration policy issues.

After Martelli became a member of the Socialisti Democratici Italiani (PDI), he was elected as the candidate for member of the 5th European Parliament in the 1999 European elections and was a member of this until 2004. On January 19, 2001, together with Gianni De Michelis and Bobo Craxi , the son of Bettino Craxi, he founded the Nuovo Partito Socialista Italiano (NPSI), which, however, did not come close to the influence and power of the former PSI.

TV presenter and newspaper editor

After retiring from the European Parliament, he was the private television station Canale 5 presenter of the talk show Claudio Martelli racconta and then from September 2005 to April 2006 the show L'Incudine , the also to the group Mediaset of Silvio Berlusconi owned private television station Italia 1 . He then returned to Canale 5 and hosted the television program Flash Back there in the fall of 2006 .

From 2005 to 2008 he was also an editor for the magazines Osservatorio and Oggi . In 2009 he returned to Canale 5, where he worked as a television journalist on issues relating to the constitution of Italy .

In the 2011 local elections he tried unsuccessfully to return to politics when he ran unsuccessfully for a mandate on the city ​​council of Siena .

literature

• Claudio Martelli , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 39/1989 of September 18, 1989, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Entry (8th legislative period) on the homepage of the Camera dei deputati
• Entry (9th legislative period) on the homepage of the Camera dei deputati
• Entry (10th legislative period) on the homepage of the Camera dei deputati
• Entry (11th legislative period) on the homepage of the Camera dei deputati
• Entry on Claudio Martelli in the Members' database of the European Parliament