Francesco Rutelli
Francesco Rutelli (born June 14, 1954 in Rome ) is an Italian politician . He was mayor of Rome from 1993 to 2001, from 2002 to 2007 chairman of the La Margherita party and from 2006 to 2008 Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Culture in the Romano Prodis cabinet . From 2004 to 2019 he was also one of the two leaders of the European Democratic Party (EDP).
Political career
At first he belonged to the Partito Radicale of Marco Pannella , for which he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1983 . In 1989 he switched to the newly created Verdi Arcobaleno ("Rainbow Greens") movement, which in turn was absorbed into the Federazione dei Verdi the following year . For these he became national coordinator in 1992. The following year, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi appointed him Minister of the Environment: Rutelli took office, but resigned only a day later to protest the parliament's refusal to prosecute former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi .
Mayor of Rome
In December 1993 Rutelli became a candidate for mayor of the center-left alliance ( PDS , Greens, Radicali) in Rome . In the second ballot he won with 53.1% against Gianfranco Fini from the neo-fascist MSI . Rutelli became the first “green” mayor of the eternal city. In 1997 he was re-elected with 60.4% in the first ballot. In his second term of office he was able to distinguish himself as manager of the " Holy Year 2000 ". Rutelli was one of the most important representatives of Centocittà ( "hundred cities"), a network of mayors that the center-left coalition L'Ulivo of Romano Prodi supported.
Top candidate from L'Ulivo
Centocittà was one of the components that gave rise to the I Democratici party in 1999 - a center-left party whose avowed role model was the US Democratic Party . In the same year Rutelli was elected to the European Parliament for this party , where he joined the liberal ELDR group . In the 2001 Italian parliamentary elections , Rutelli ran as the top candidate on the Margherita list and prime minister of the center-left alliance L'Ulivo. The coalition led by Rutelli lost the election against the center-right alliance Casa delle Libertà led by Silvio Berlusconi .
Chairman of La Margherita
In 2002 he made a decisive contribution to the fact that the parties on the Margherita list - I Democratici, Partito Popolare Italiano and Rinnovamento Italiano - merged to form a new party, of which he became chairman: Democrazia è Libertà - La Margherita . For the 2004 European elections , he took up a proposal by Romano Prodi and presented the unified list of the center-left camp Uniti nell'Ulivo . Shortly before this election, Rutelli and François Bayrou from the French UDF founded the European Democratic Party (EDP), an association of pro-European, socio-political progressive parties from the political center. Rutelli and Bayrou became its co-chairs. The elected European parliamentarians of the EDP merged with those of the liberal ELDR to form the ALDE group .
After the regional elections that were successful for Margherita in 2005 and the equally successful primaries of the L'Unione alliance for the parliamentary elections in 2006, he launched the idea of a unity list with the Democratici di Sinistra , which was a first step in what Rutelli described as a political dream: the creation of a large center-left party. This emerged in October 2007 as Partito Democratico from the merger of the Democratici di Sinistra and Margherita.
Minister of Culture and Deputy Prime Minister
After the Unione's election victory, Rutelli was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture in Romano Prodi's second government on May 17, 2006 . He held both positions until the Prodi government was voted out of office on May 8, 2008.
As a center-left candidate, Rutelli ran for mayoral elections in Rome in April 2008. In the first ballot he received the relative majority with 45.8% of the votes cast, but was defeated in the runoff election by his opponent Gianni Alemanno from Popolo della Libertà (PdL), who won the election with 53.7% against 46.3% could decide.
Alleanza per l'Italia
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Within the Partito Democratico , Rutelli led the center-leaning wing. In the primary election of the party leader in October 2009, he supported Dario Franceschini , who, however, was defeated by Pier Luigi Bersani from the left wing. Rutelli now feared the party would shift to the left and resigned from the PD, but few other members followed him.
Then he founded with the Christian Democrat Bruno Tabacci , the governor of Trentino Lorenzo Dellai and the mayor of Venice Massimo Cacciari a new center party under the name Alleanza per l'Italia (ApI, "Alliance for Italy"). This wanted to represent a bourgeois alternative to the populist politics of Silvio Berlusconi and the Lega Nord , allied with him , but also to the social democratic left. When it first ran for the regional elections in March, the ApI disappointed with only 0.6% nationwide.
In December 2010, the ApI formed the alliance Nuovo Polo per l'Italia (NPI) with the Christian Democratic UDC of Pier Ferdinando Casini and the liberal-conservative FLI , split off from Berlusconi's PdL, under Gianfranco Fini , which is the “third pole” of Italian politics - between the middle -right and center-left block - understood. The NPI dissolved again in 2012. Then Rutelli returned to the center-left camp. For the 2013 parliamentary election , ApI ran as part of the Centro Democratico under Bruno Tabacci, which in turn was a component of the center-left bloc. Rutelli himself no longer ran for parliament. The now meaningless ApI dissolved in 2016.
However, Rutelli remained co-chairman of the EDP at European level until November 2019, when he founded PDE Italia as its Italian branch . On November 29, 2019, he was elected President of the Institute of European Democrats (IED), the party-affiliated foundation of the EDP.
Web links
- Official website
- Entry on Francesco Rutelli in the database of Members of the European Parliament
- Francesco Rutelli in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
swell
- ↑ Rutelli Alemanno e al ballottaggio Corriere della Sera 15 April, 2008
- ↑ Rutelli Crolla contro Alemanno. So finisce il "laboratorio Roma" La Repubblica , April 28, 2008
- ↑ Südtirol Online, November 11, 2009
- ↑ swissinfo.ch, November 11, 2009 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ François Bayrou unanimously re-elected President of the European Democratic Party. 29th November 2019.
- ^ Francesco Rutelli, new President of the IED. Institute of European Democrats, December 4, 2019.
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Franco Carraro | Mayor of Rome 1993-2001 |
Walter Veltroni |
| predecessor | Office | successor |
|---|---|---|
| Rocco Buttiglione | Italian Minister for Cultural Goods May 2006-May 2008 |
Sandro Bondi |
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rutelli, Francesco |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian politician, member of the Camera dei deputati, MEP |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 14, 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rome |