Prime Minister of Italy

Mario Monti, Prime Minister of Italy (since Nov 16, 2011)

Mario Monti (born 19 March 1943) is an Italian economist and academic who is Prime Minister of Italy, as well as Minister of Economy and Finance, since November 2011. Monti served as a European Commissioner from 1995 to 2004, with responsibility for the Internal Market, Services, Customs and Taxation from 1995 to 1999 and then for Competition from 1999 to 2004. He has also been Rector and President of Bocconi University. Monti was appointed a Senator for Life in the Italian Senate on 9 November 2011, and three days later was invited by President Giorgio Napolitano to form a new technocratic government in Italy following the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi.

Mario Monti was born in Varese on 19 March 1943. His father hailed from Varese (though he spent much of his life in Argentina after emigrating during World War II), and his mother was born in Piacenza. Mario Monti holds a degree in economics and management from Bocconi University, Milan. He completed graduate studies at Yale University, where he studied under James Tobin, the Nobel prize-winning economist.

He taught economics at the University of Turin from 1970 to 1985 before moving to Bocconi University, where he was its Rector from 1999 to 2001, and has been its President since 1994. He was also the President of SUERF (The European Money and Finance Forum) from 1982 to 1985. His research has helped to create the ‘Klein-Monti model’, aimed at describing the behaviour of banks operating under monopoly circumstances.

Monti is a member of the Presiderium of the Friends of Europe, a leading European think tank, and was the first chairman of Bruegel, a European think tank founded in 2005. He is the European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, a think tank founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller. He is also a leading member of the exclusive Bilderberg Group.

Monti has been an international advisor to Goldman Sachs and The Coca-Cola Company.

On 9 November 2011, Monti was appointed a Lifetime Senator by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. Mario Monti was seen as a favorite to replace Silvio Berlusconi to lead a new unity government in Italy in order to implement reforms and austerity measures. On 12 November 2011, following Berlusconi’s resignation, Napolitano invited Monti to form a new government. Monti accepted the offer, and held talks with the leaders of Italy’s political parties, saying that he wanted to form a government that would remain in office until the next scheduled elections in 2013. On 16 November 2011, Monti unveiled a technocratic cabinet, and was officially sworn in as Prime Minister of Italy. He also appointed himself as Minister of Economy and Finance.

Mario Monti is married, and has two children.

Known for his reserved character, Monti acknowledges not being especially sociable, explaining that his youth was given over to hard study, alongside spare time activities such as cycling and keeping up with world affairs by tuning in to foreign short wave radio stations.

Silvio Berlusconi, Former Prime Minister of Italy (resigned on Nov 12, 2011)

Silvio Berlusconi, Prime Minister of Italy

Born in Milan September 29, 1936. Married, five children. He lives in Milan.

Graduated in Law with honors. Entrepreneur.

Knight’s work. In 1962 he began working in the area of the building contractors. Be the first Italian player in the development of residential and commercial centers (Milan 2, Milan 3, Sunflower). In 1980 he founded Channel 5, the first national television network, in addition, Italy 1 (1982) and Rete 4 (1984). The commercial success of the TV allows you to develop various initiatives, insert, like all other companies within the parent holding company Fininvest, founded in 1978.

Spread so commercial television in Europe: France La Cinq (1986), Germany Telefünf (1987), Telecinco in Spain (1989). With the Mondadori (1989) becomes the main Italian publisher in books and periodicals. The Fininvest Group, with Mediolanum and Italy Program, to develop a strong presence in insurance and financial products. President since 1986 is the football team AC Milan which led to being the first club in the world for the number of international victories. On January 26, 1994 he resigned all his positions in Fininvest.

Foreign Languages

French and English.

POLITICAL PROFILE

Positions of party and political activity

Founder and President of the political movement Forza Italy. ”
Founder and President of the Political Movement “People of Freedom.”

Institutional charges and parliamentary activity

In the XII legislature was Prime Minister from May to December 1994. Later he was part of the 3rd Standing Committee – Foreign and Community Affairs. In 1994 he participated in elections to the European Parliament shall be elected in all five boroughs Italian, but has not joined the Assembly for incompatibility with the office of President of the Council then held. In the XIII legislature has been part of the 3rd Standing Committee – Foreign and Community Affairs, the 1st Standing Committee – Constitutional Affairs, the Council Presidency and interior of the parliamentary commission for constitutional reforms, the Italian Parliamentary Delegation to the Assembly of the Council ‘s Europe and the Italian parliamentary delegation to the Assembly of Western European Union. In 1999, reelected to Parliament, V term, resigned June 10, 2001 for incompatibility with the office of President of the Council of Ministers, who served in the XIV legislature of the National Parliament. Interim Minister for Foreign Affairs on 6 January 2002 to November 14, 2002, Interim Minister of Economy and Finance 3 to 16 July 2004 and interim Minister of Health 11 March 2006.

On November 18, 2007 in Piazza San Babila in Milan announces the birth of the future movement “People of Freedom” which is actually founded February 27, 2008.

With the same movement won the parliamentary elections of 13 and 14 April 2008.
In the sixteenth term becomes President of the Council of Ministers for the fourth time.

13-14 April 2008 elections

Elected to the House in the list The People of Freedom in the Molise Region XVIII with 71,994 votes equal to 36.48%.

Previous elections

Elected in the 1994 consultation, the College District No. 1 of the XV-Lazio 1, with 34,534 votes – 46.3%. Linked lists: Forza Italy, the National Alliance. Reelected in 1996 with the Pole for Freedom in College 1 – 1 Milan, Lombardy 1 of the Third District, with 46,135 votes – 51, 5%. Linked lists: Forza Italy.

Confirmed in 2001 with the House of Freedoms in the College # 1 – 1 Milan, the Lombardy Region III 1 with 42,086 votes – 53.7%. Linked lists: Forza Italy.

Reelected in 2006 in Italy in the nineteenth Force list Campania Region 1 with 492,594 votes equal to 27.23%. Linked lists: Forza Italy.

Assignments and activities in local authorities

City Councilman at the Commune of Milan from 27 April 1997 to May 12, 2001, from May 13 to November 9, 2001, from 28 May 2006 to 12 May 2008.

Giorgio Napolitano, President of Italy

Giorgio Napolitano, President of Italy

Giorgio Napolitano was born in Naples on June 29th, 1925.

He graduated in law from Naples University in December 1947, with a dissertation on political economy entitled Il mancato sviluppo industriale del Mezzogiorno dopo l’unità e la legge speciale per Napoli del 1904 (The Failure to Bring about Industrial Development in Southern Italy after Italy’s Unification and Special Legislation for Naples in 1904). In 1945-46 he engaged actively in the Student Faculty Councils movement, and was a delegate to the first National University Congress.

In 1942, as un undergraduate in Naples, he joined a group of young anti-Fascists and in 1945 he joined the Italian Communist Party, of which he was a militant and then a leading figure until the Democratic Party of the Left was established.

From the autumn of 1946 to the spring of 1948 he was a member of the  Secretariat of the Italian Economic Centre for Southern Italy, chaired by Senator Paratore. He took also an active part for over 10 years in the Movement for the Rebirth of Southern Italy, since its foundation in December 1947.

He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1953, and with the exception of the 4th Parliament he was a Member of Parliament until 1996, always re-elected in the Naples constituency.

His parliamentary activity began as a member of the Budget and State Holdings Committee, and focused – also in debates on the Floor of the House – on the issues of Southern Italy’s development and national economic policy.

In the 8th (from 1981) and 9th Parliaments (until 1986) he chaired the Communist group at the Chamber of Deputies.

During the 1980s his activity focused on international and European policy issues, both as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Chamber of Deputies and (from 1984 to 1992 and from 1994 to 1996) of the Italian delegation to the North Atlantic Assembly, and also through manifold political and cultural initiatives. As far back as the 1970s he was an active lecturer abroad, visiting International Policy Institutes in the UK and Germany and several US Universities (Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Berkeley, SAIS and CSIS in Washington).

From 1989 to 1992 he was a Member of the European Parliament.
On June 3rd 1992, in the 11th Parliament, he was elected Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and remained in office until the end of that Parliament in April 1994.

During the 12th Parliament he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chairman of the Special Committee on the Reorganisation of Broadcasting Sector.

During the 13th Parliament he served as Minister of the Interior and for the Coordination of Civil Protection in the Prodi Government, from May 1996 to October 1998.

Since 1995 he has been the President of the Italian Council of the European Movement.

From June 1999 to June 2004 he chaired the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

In the 14th Parliament the then Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Pier Ferdinando Casini, appointed him as Chairman of the Foundation of the Chamber of Deputies, an office which he held until the end of that Parliament.

On  September 23rd 2005 he was appointed life senator by the President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi.

On May 10th 2006 he was elected President of the Republic with 543 votes. He was sworn-in on May 15th, 2006.

In acknowledgement of hid dedication to the cause of Parliamentary democracy and his contribution to the rapprochement between the Italian Left and European Socialism, in 1997 he was awarded the Leibnitz-Ring International Award in Hannover for his “lifelong” commitment.

In 2004 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Political Science from Bari University.

He contributed in particular to the journal Società (Society) and, from 1954 to 1960, to the journal Cronache meridionali (Southern Chronicles), with essays on the Mezzogiorno (South of Italy) debate following the Liberation, on the thinking of Guido Dorso, on agricultural reform policies and on Manlio Rossi-Doria’s theses on the industrialisation of Southern Italy. In 1962 he published his first book Movimento operaio e industria di Stato (Workers’ Movement and State Industry), with special reference to the analysis of Pasquale Saraceno.

In 1975 he published the book Intervista sul PCI (The Italian Road to Socialism: An Interview by Eric Hobsbawm with Giorgio Napolitano of the Italian Communist Party), which was translated and published in over 10 countries.

In 1979 he wrote In mezzo al guado (At Mid-Crossing), about the period of the so-called “democratic solidarity” (from 1976 to 1979), when he acted as spokesperson for the PCI and handled relations with the Andreotti government on economic and trade union issues.

In 1988, in his book Oltre i vecchi confini (Beyond Old Boundaries), he addressed the problems that arose in the years of the thaw in relations between East and West, at the time of President Reagan in the USA and President Gorbachev in the USSR.

His work Al di là del guado: la scelta riformista (Beyond the Crossing: the Reformist Choice) collects his public addresses from 1986 to 1990.

The book Europa e America dopo l’89 (Europe and America after 1989), published in 1992, is a collection of lectures he gave in the United States after the fall of the Berlin wall and the Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe.

In 1994 he published, partly in the form of a personal diary, the book Dove va la Repubblica – Una transizione incompiuta (Where the Republic is Heading – An Unfinished Transition), on the period of the 11th Parliament, form his viewpoint as Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies.

In 2002, he published his book Europa politica (A Political Europe), at the height of his activity as Chairman of the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament.

His latest book Dal PCI al socialismo europeo: un’autobiografia politica (From the PCI to European Socialism: a Political Autobiography) was published in 2005.