Francesco Speroni

Francesco Speroni in 2014 in the European Parliament

Francesco Enrico Speroni (born October 4, 1946 in Busto Arsizio ) is an Italian politician of the regionalist right-wing populist Lega Nord (LN) party and a member of the European Parliament .

Life

Speroni worked as a flight engineer from 1970 to 1997 . He also completed a degree in political science in 1975 and law in 1999 . After serving as chairman of the flight engineers' association in 1980/81, he was a member of the city councils of Albizzate (1986), Samarate (1987-90) and Busto Arsizio (since 1990) from the 1980s . From 1991 to 1994, Speroni was head of the Lega Lombarda party , which at that time was already firmly connected to the Lega Nord .

In the European elections in 1989 , Speroni was elected for the first time for the Northern League in the European Parliament , where he belonged to the rainbow group. In 1994 he left the European Parliament again to become Minister for Institutional Reform in Berlusconi's first cabinet . He held this office until 1995. From 1992 to 1999, Speroni was also a member of the Italian Senate , and from 1996 to 2000 he was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the WEU .

In the European elections in 1999 , Speroni was re-elected to the European Parliament, to which he has belonged ever since. From 1999 he was one of the chairmen of the Technical Group of Independent Members ; after its dissolution, it was non-attached from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, the Lega Nord joined the Eurosceptic fraction Independence / Democracy to, but was in 2006 again excluded from it. As a result, Speroni became a member of the national-conservative parliamentary group Union for a Europe of Nations (UEN). After the European elections in 2009 , Lega Nord was involved in the founding of the new right-wing conservative-Eurosceptic parliamentary group on Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD). Together with the British Nigel Farage ( UK Independence Party , UKIP), Speroni became parliamentary group leader. He is also a member of the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

Web links

Commons : Francesco Speroni  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Entry on Francesco Speroni in the database of Members of the European Parliament
• VoteWatch.eu: Francesco Speroni's voting behavior in the European Parliament (in English)