Piero Fassino

Piero Fassino (2013)

Piero Fassino (born October 7, 1949 in Avigliana , Turin province ) is an Italian politician of the Partito Democratico (PD). He was a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 1994 to 2011 and again since 2018 . From 2001 to 2007 he led the Democratici di Sinistra (DS; Left Democrats) party. He was Mayor of Turin from May 2011 to June 2016 .

Political career

Piero Fassino comes from a traditionally socialist family: his grandfather Cesare Grisa was one of the founders of the Partito Socialista Italiano , his father Eugenio Fassino was a partisan leader of the Brigate Garibaldi of the anti-fascist Resistance . As a teenager he played soccer at Juventus Turin . He studied political science at the University of Turin . In 1968 he joined the Federazione giovanile comunista , youth organization of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) and three years later became its chairman in Turin.

In 1975 he was elected to the city parliament of Turin, to which he belonged for ten years. From 1985 to 1990 was in the council (consiglio) of the province of Turin. In addition, from 1983 to 1987 Fassino was chairman of the regional organization of the PCI in Turin. In 1987 he was elected to the national party leadership of the PCI, first as coordinator of the secretariat, then as head of party organization.

Fassino in 2001

After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989/90, the PCI was transformed into the Partito Democratico della Sinistra (PDS; Democratic Left Party) in 1991 and the Democratici di Sinistra (DS; Left Democrats) in February 1998 . From 1991 to 1996 Piero Fassino was party secretary for international issues, responsible for the PDS joining the Socialist International . In the general election in 1994 he was first in the Italian Chamber of Deputies elected. After his re-election in 1996, he represented the constituency of Venaria Reale near Turin. He became State Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with responsibility for EC policy in the Prodi I cabinet . From October 1998 to April 2000 he was Minister for Foreign Trade in the cabinet of his party colleague Massimo D'Alema . From April 25, 2000 he was Minister of Justice in the government of Giuliano Amato . He held this office until June 11, 2001.

In the Italian parliamentary elections in 2001 , he was behind Francesco Rutelli , the top candidate of the center-left alliance L'Ulivo , his party's candidate for the office of deputy prime minister. After the election defeat (a center-right alliance under Silvio Berlusconi won the election) he was elected party secretary of the DS on November 16, 2001; in February 2005 he was confirmed in this office. He pushed the merger of the DS with other center-left parties to form the Partito Democratico (PD), which took place in 2007. Fassino was a member of the PD's founding committee. Within the party, alongside Dario Franceschini and Debora Serracchiani , Fassino is one of the leading representatives of the center-political group Area Democratica (AreaDem). In the open election of the party leader in October 2009, he supported Franceschini, who was defeated by Pier Luigi Bersani of the left wing.

From 2006 to 2011, Fassino was Italian delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO , the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Western European Union . The High Representative for the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy, Javier Solana , appointed Fassino as the European Union's Special Envoy for Myanmar on November 6, 2007 .

On May 16, 2011, he was elected mayor of the city of Turin as a center-left candidate with 56.7% of the vote in the first ballot . From 2013 to 2016 he was also chairman of the national association of Italian municipalities ANCI. After the administrative reform of 2015 that transformed the province of Turin into a metropolitan city , Fassino was automatically its mayor. He ran for re-election in 2016, but lost in the runoff election with 45.4% against Chiara Appendino , the candidate of the five-star movement .

In the 2018 parliamentary elections , he again won a seat in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. He has been Vice-Chair of the Committee on Foreign and EU Affairs since then.

Private life

Piero Fassino was married to the La Stampa journalist Marina Cassi for the first time. He married his second wife Anna Maria Serafini (* 1953) in 1993. She is also a politician and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies from 1987 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2013 to the Senate for the same parties as Fassino. Fassino is tall and noticeably lean: at 1.92 meters tall, he weighs only 66 kilograms. The reason he gives is that he simply forgets to eat under stress.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ City of Turin : Il Sindaco (Italian) Retrieved June 5, 2011.
2. ↑ lastampa.it : Chiara Appendino è sindaco: svolta storica per Torino. In due settimane è cresciuta di 80 mila voti
3. ↑ Piero Fassino: ecco perché sono così magro. In: OK Salute e benessere , February 24, 2014.