Raffaele Fitto

Raffaele Fitto (2019)

Raffaele Fitto (born August 28, 1969 in Maglie , Province of Lecce ) is an Italian politician . He was President of the Puglia Region from 2000 to 2005 . From 2008 to 2011 he was a minister in the Silvio Berlusconi government . He has been a member of the European Parliament since 2014 and one of the two chairmen of the Group of European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) since June 2019 .

Life and Careers

Raffaele Fitto is the son of Salvatore Fitto (1941–1988), a politician of the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), who was also president of the Apulia region from 1985 to 1988. Raffaele Fitto graduated from the University of Bari with a law degree in 1994 .

Regional Policy (until 2005)

Already in his youth he was politically active in the Democrazia Cristiana. In 1990, at the age of 20, he was elected to the regional council of Apulia. After the dissolution of the DC in 1994, he initially belonged to their successor party, Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI). However, he left this together with Rocco Buttiglione the next year and joined the Cristiani Democratici Uniti (CDU), which, unlike the PPI, sought a center-right alliance with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI). In 1995 he was re-elected to the regional council of Apulia on the joint list of FI and CDU. He then belonged to the regional government as Deputy President Salvatore Distaso until 1998.

When the CDU moved towards the center-left alliance L'Ulivo in 1998 , Fitto resigned together with the President of Lombardy Roberto Formigoni and took part in the establishment of the Cristiani Democratici per la Libertà (CDL), which continues to the center-right Camp and competed in all elections in alliance with Forza Italia. In the 1999 European elections he was elected to the European Parliament on the list of FIs. As a member of the Christian Democratic EPP-ED Group , he was a member of the Committee on Regional Policy, Transport and Tourism and of the delegation for relations with south-eastern Europe.

In the regional elections in Apulia, he ran as the top candidate of the center-right alliance (supported by FI, Alleanza Nazionale , CCD and CDU). He won the election with 54% and became president of the region. He resigned his mandate in the European Parliament in June 2000. The CDL disbanded in March 2001 and Fitto joined Forza Italia. In the regional elections in April 2005, he ran for re-election, but lost 49.2% to the communist Nichi Vendola , who succeeded him in office.

National MP and Minister (2006-14)

In the 2006 parliamentary elections , Fitto was elected to represent Apulia in the Italian House of Representatives, and his mandate was confirmed in 2008 and 2013. From 2006 to 2008 he was spokesman for the FI Group in the parliamentary committee on regional issues. In the Berlusconi IV cabinet , Fitto was Minister for Relations with the Regions from 2008 to 2011, and Minister for Regions and Territorial Cohesion in 2010 after the office was renamed. The FI went up in 2009 in the center-right rallying party Il Popolo della Libertà (PdL), but renamed itself back to Forza Italia in 2013 .

MEPs and party leader (from 2014)

In the 2014 European elections , Fitto was re- elected to the European Parliament as the representative of the FI in southern Italy . There he initially belonged again to the EPP Group , was a member of the Committee on Regional Development and the delegation for relations with Japan. While Fitto was still one of the most loyal supporters of Berlusconi within the FI in 2013, in the following year he developed into one of the sharpest internal party critics. He called on the party leader Berlusconi several times, unsuccessfully, to change leadership and generation.

The break occurred on the occasion of the regional elections in Apulia in May 2015. In this case, Fitto's supporters came up with their own list - Oltre con Fitto - and supported the provincial president of Bari, Francesco Schittulli , while the official candidate of FI was Adriana Poli Bortone ( ultimately both lost and the center-left won the election). On May 17, 2015, Fitto resigned from Forza Italia. A day later he also switched from the EPP Group in the EU Parliament to the Group of European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR), of which he immediately became a member of the board. As a result of his change of political group, his committee memberships also changed: he was then on the Budgetary Control Committee and a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean and for relations with the Maghreb countries .

On June 3, 2015 he founded the Conservatori e Riformisti (CR; the name is based on that of the EKR parliamentary group) with a group of supporters - mainly from Apulia - of which he became chairman. The party was avowedly based on the model of the British Conservatives under David Cameron . In December 2016, the ECR parliamentary group elected him deputy chairman. Fitto's Conservatori e Riformisti party merged with other small conservative and liberal parties in January 2017 to form Direzione Italia (DI), which also heads Fitto.

For the 2019 European elections , he agreed an alliance with the right-wing conservative Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) party led by Giorgia Meloni , which is also part of the alliance of conservatives and reformers in Europe . As a result, DI did not come up with its own list, instead Fitto ran on the FdI list for southern Italy and was thus re-elected. The ECR group in the European Parliament then elected Fitto as one of its two co-chairs alongside the Pole Ryszard Legutko .

Web links

Commons : Raffaele Fitto  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Official website of Raffaele Fitto
• Entry on Raffaele Fitto in the Members' database of the European Parliament

Individual evidence

1. ↑ New separation for Berlusconi: top politician Fitto leaves. In: Tiroler Tageszeitung online. May 18, 2015, accessed March 9, 2020 . 
2. ^ Antonio Rapisarda: Cosa (non) vogliono i “leoni” Fitto e Capezzone. In: Formiche , July 16, 2015.