Enzo Bianco

Enzo Bianco (approx. 2007)

Enzo Bianco (born February 24, 1951 in Aidone , Enna province ) is an Italian politician . He was a member of the Partito Repubblicano Italiano (PRI), the La Margherita party and, since its founding in 2007, the Partito Democratico (PD). He was mayor of Catania for three terms : 1988–89, 1993–2000 and 2013–2018. From 1999 to 2001 he was the Minister of the Interior of Italy. He was also a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1992–93 and 2001–06 and the Senate from 2006–13 .

education and profession

After attending school, Bianco studied law and after graduating ( Laurea ) worked as a lawyer in Catania in 1975 and then from 1976 to 1982 as a management consultant and financial expert at the Consorzio di Credito per le Opere Pubbliche (CREDIOP), a public credit institution. Between 1983 and 1988 he was a representative of an engineering office that was active in America , Asia and Africa . He later worked again for several years as a lawyer and management consultant.

Political career

Bianco as MP (1992)

Beginning and first term of office as mayor (1988-89)

Bianco was from 1976 to 1979 a member of the board of the youth organization of the left-liberal PRI ( Federazione Nazionale dei Giovani Repubblicani ) and from 1980 to 1984 foreign policy spokesman for the PRI.

In 1988 he became a member of the City Council of Catania. From July 1988 to November 1989 he was mayor of the Sicilian provincial capital, who was then indirectly elected by the city council. In 1991 Bianco was elected a member of the Regional Assembly of Sicily ( Assemblea regional siciliana ).

In April 1992 he was elected for the first time as a member of the Camera dei deputati (Chamber of Deputies) as a candidate for the PRI . There he represented the constituency of Catania until September 14, 1993 and was a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs. A special concern of his was the change in the Italian municipal constitution and the introduction of direct elections for the mayor.

Second term as mayor (1993-2000)

After this had been implemented, Bianco was re-elected Mayor of Catania in June 1993. He was supported by Patto per Catania , the local branch of the Christian-liberal reform party Patto Segni . In the first ballot he received 40.4% of the vote and prevailed in the runoff election with 52.2% against Claudio Fava from La Rete . After the Tangentopoli scandal, the PRI disappeared into insignificance and in 1994 Bianco switched to the small, social-liberal Alleanza Democratica (AD), which in turn became part of the Unione Democratica (UD) in 1996 .

In the 1997 local elections, Bianco was re-elected with 63.2% in the first ballot. This time he enjoyed the support of a broad center-left alliance. Like his counterparts in Rome and Venice, Francesco Rutelli and Massimo Cacciari , Bianco was a member of the Centocittà (“Hundred Cities”) network of mayors who supported Romano Prodi's center-left L'Ulivo (“The Olive Tree”). Centocittà went in 1999 in the Prodi initiated, social liberal party I Democratici . In January 2000, Bianco resigned his mayor's office.

Interior Minister and Member of Parliament (1999-2006)

On December 22, 1999, Bianco was appointed Minister of the Interior in the government of Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and held this office in the subsequent government of Giuliano Amato until June 10, 2001. In this capacity, he suspected in 2000 that the right-wing extremist organization Forza Nuova controls the Irriducibili Lazio , one of the largest Italian ultrà groups .

In May 2001 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a candidate for the La Margherita list , which also included I Democratici, where he represented constituency XXV ( Sicily 2) until April 2006 . During this time he was from August 2001 to April 2006 Chairman of the Parliament's Committee on Intelligence, Security Services and State Secrets. At the beginning of 2004, he reported that in 1997, 2000 and 2001 Islamist groups linked to Islamic terrorists had been excavated . Since the Madrid train attacks in March 2004 and the murder of two Italian hostages in Iraq in September 2004, there has been a noticeable rise in the population's distrust of the Muslim minority. In the local elections in 2005 Bianco ran again for the mayor's office in Catania, but lost 45.7% to the incumbent Umberto Scapagnini from Forza Italia .

Senator (2006-13)

Bianco was elected to the Senato della Repubblica (Senate) on April 9, 2006 for the center-left - electoral alliance L'Ulivo , to which La Margherita also belonged . There he was chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs from 2006 to 2008. The parties of the L'Ulivo alliance merged in 2007 to form Partito Democratico , of which Bianco has been a member since then. After his re-election as Senator in 2008, he continued to be a member of the Constitutional Committee, Italian delegate to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and, from 2010 to 2013, a member of the parliamentary committee for the implementation of fiscal federalism.

Third term as mayor (2013-18)

In the 2013 local elections, Bianco reapplied as a center-left candidate for the office of Mayor of Catania and won with 50.6% of the votes in the first ballot. After the transformation of the province of Catania into a metropolitan city through the administrative reform of 2016, Bianco automatically became its mayor. In 2018, however, he failed to be re-elected: he received only 26.4%, while Salvo Pogliese from Forza Italia prevailed with 52.3%.

Web links

Commons : Enzo Bianco  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on the Senate homepage