Luigi Berlinguer

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Luigi Berlinguer (1994)

Luigi Berlinguer (born July 25, 1932 in Sassari , Sardinia ) is an Italian legal historian and politician ( PCI , (P) DS , PD ). He was Rector of the University of Siena from 1985 to 1994 and Italian Minister of Education from 1996 to 2000. From the European elections 2009 to 2014 he was a member of the European Parliament in the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Social Democrats (S&D).

career

Luigi Berlinguer, ca.1963

Career start until 1968

Luigi Berlinguer is a cousin of Enrico Berlinguer , who was General Secretary of the Communist Party of Italy from 1972 to 1984 and who significantly shaped the current of Eurocommunism .

After studying law , which he graduated with top marks in 1955, Berlinguer worked as a research assistant at the University of Sassari from 1959 and did research on, among other things, Domenico Alberto Azuni and the history of maritime and commercial law . At the same time, he was involved in politics during his studies. From 1952 he was chairman of the Federazione giovanile comunista, the youth organization of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI); In 1956 he was elected to the Sardinian provincial parliament and in 1963 to the Italian parliament ( Camera dei deputati ). Here he worked, among other things, in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, where he campaigned primarily for school and university reform.

Scientific career 1968 to 1993

In 1968 Berlinguer resigned from parliament to take up a professorship for the exegesis of Italian legal sources at the University of Sassari. From 1969 to 1970 he was at the University of Siena , but then returned to Sassari, where he took a chair . In 1972 he became dean of the Faculty of Law, where he campaigned for the introduction of a new course in political science .

In 1973 Berlinguer again accepted a call to Siena, where he took over the chair for the exegesis of Italian legal sources and from 1988 also for Italian legal history and founded a new institute for political science, which he headed from 1984 to 1987. From 1975 to 1982 he was a member of the PCI in the regional parliament of Tuscany . From 1971 to 1984 he also headed the magazine Democrazia e diritto , in which he campaigned for administrative reform. As a result of this experience, he was also chairman of the party's internal commission for public administration reform from 1982 to 1985.

In 1985 Berlinguer was elected Rector of the University of Siena, an office he held until 1994. From 1986 he was also a member of the Ministerial Commission for University Development, from 1989 Secretary General of the Italian Rectors' Conference. In these offices he exerted influence on the modernization and Europeanization of the Italian higher education system and the expansion of university autonomy. At the same time, he continued his academic work and published several works, which now dealt primarily with political science and legal policy issues.

Political career from 1993

1993 Berlinguer was head of the University of Siena to Italian Universities and Research Minister in the cabinet of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi to be, however, came just days after taking office in protest against a parliamentary decision in connection with the affair Mani pulite back. In the 1994 elections, he won a seat in the Camera dei deputati , to which he was a member until 2001, as the top candidate on the list of Left Democrats (the successor party to the PCI) in Tuscany . After initially being a member of the Committee on Constitutional Affairs until 1996, he was Chairman of the Committee on European Policy from 2000 to 2001 .

From 1996 to 2000 Berlinguer was Italian Minister of Education in the governments of Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema . He advocated extensive reforms of the Italian education and research landscape in order to do justice to the increasing international networking and the importance of education for the economy. In 1997 he pushed through a far-reaching school reform that came to be known as the Berlinguer Reform. Among other things, different school types were combined and a kind of vocational school was introduced as an alternative to regular schooling. The reform was, however, controversial because, in the opinion of the critics, it led to higher drop-out rates, since students left regular school without actually continuing their training in the vocational school; In 2003 the Italian school system was fundamentally reformed again. In 1999 Berlinguer signed the Sorbonne Declaration , together with the German, French and British Ministers of Education , which prepared the Bologna Process for the creation of a European Higher Education Area .

In 2001 Berlinguer was elected to the Senato della Repubblica , where he was a member of the Education and European Committees. He resigned his mandate in the Senate on July 24, 2002 after the parliament had elected him to the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura , the self-governing body of the Italian judiciary, to which he belonged until 2006. In particular, he advocated the establishment of the European network of self-governing legal bodies, of which he was first president from 2004 to 2007.

In the European elections in Italy in 2009 , Berlinguer was elected to the European Parliament in the constituency of north-east Italy as the leading candidate for the Partito Democratico , the successor party to the left-wing Democrats . There he was deputy chairman of the legal committee until 2012 (afterwards simple member of the committee) and delegate for relations with India . In 2010, Berlinguer signed the Spinelli Group's call for a federal Europe. Among other things, he was rapporteur for the proposal for a Common European Sales Law (2013) and the mid-term review of the Stockholm Program (2014)

Awards

Berlinguer has received several honorary doctorates from , among others, the University of Toronto , the Universidad Nacional de La Plata , the University of Paris V , the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Università degli studi Roma Tre . He has also received several political honors, including the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1992), the German Federal Cross of Merit (1998) and the Order of the French Legion of Honor (2005).

Web links

Wikiquote: Luigi Berlinguer  - Quotes (Italian)

swell

  1. ^ Website of the European Parliament
personal data
SURNAME Berlinguer, Luigi
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian politician (PCI, PD), member of the Camera, MEP
DATE OF BIRTH July 25, 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Sassari , Sardinia