Angelino Alfano | |
|---|---|
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| Minister of Foreign Affairs | |
| In office 12 December 2016 – 1 June 2018 | |
| Prime Minister | Paolo Gentiloni |
| Preceded by | Paolo Gentiloni |
| Succeeded by | Enzo Moavero Milanesi |
| Chairperson-in-Office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe | |
| In office 1 January 2018 – 1 June 2018 | |
| Preceded by | Karin Kneissl |
| Succeeded by | Enzo Moavero Milanesi |
| Minister of the Interior | |
| In office 28 April 2013 – 12 December 2016 | |
| Prime Minister | Enrico Letta Matteo Renzi |
| Preceded by | Anna Maria Cancellieri |
| Succeeded by | Marco Minniti |
| Deputy Prime Minister of Italy | |
| In office 28 April 2013 – 22 February 2014 | |
| Prime Minister | Enrico Letta |
| Preceded by | Massimo D'Alema (2008) Francesco Rutelli (2008) |
| Succeeded by | Luigi Di Maio (2018) Matteo Salvini (2018) |
| Minister of Justice | |
| In office 8 May 2008 – 27 July 2011 | |
| Prime Minister | Silvio Berlusconi |
| Preceded by | Luigi Scotti |
| Succeeded by | Nitto Francesco Palma |
| Member of theChamber of Deputies | |
| In office 30 May 2001 – 22 March 2018 | |
| Constituency | Sicily 1 (2001–2013) Piedmont 1 (2013–2018) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1970-10-31)31 October 1970 (age 54) Agrigento, Italy |
| Political party | DC (before 1994) FI (1994–2009) PDL (2009–2013) NCD (2013–2017) AP (since 2017) |
| Spouse | Tiziana Miceli |
| Children | 2 |
| Alma mater | Catholic University of the Sacred Heart University of Palermo |
Angelino Alfano (Italian pronunciation:[andʒeˈliːnoalˈfaːno]; born 31 October 1970) is an Italian former politician who served asMinister of Foreign Affairs from 12 December 2016 to 1 June 2018.
Alfano wasMinister of the Interior from 28 April 2013 to 12 December 2016, serving in the governments ofMatteo Renzi andEnrico Letta; from 2013 to 2014 he held the office ofDeputy Prime Minister of Italy, as part of theLetta Cabinet, and previously served asMinister of Justice from 2008 to 2011 as part of theBerlusconi IV Cabinet. He was the first and only secretary of the centre-right partyThe People of Freedom (PdL) from 2011 to 2013. In November 2013 he became Leader of theNew Centre-Right party which is a split from the PdL,[1] until March 2017 when NCD was dissolved andPopular Alternative was founded.[2]
Alfano is the first Italian politician to have held the offices of Minister of Justice, Minister of the Interior, and Minister of Foreign Affairs, which are considered among the most important ministries in theCabinet of Italy.
Alfano was born inAgrigento,Sicily, on 31 October 1970;[3] his father, Angelo Alfano, was alawyer and local politician for theChristian Democracy, who also held the position of deputy mayor of Agrigento.
After receiving alaw degree fromMilan'sUniversità Cattolica and a doctorate inCorporate law from theUniversity of Palermo, Alfano started his political experience, as his father, with the Christian Democracy party.
After some years in the Christian Democracy party, in 1994, when DC changed his name in the centre-left orientedItalian People's Party, Alfano joinedForza Italia, the new centre-right party founded by the media tycoonSilvio Berlusconi, and was elected to the Agrigento Province Council. In 1996, Alfano was the youngest member elected to theSicilian Regional Assembly.
In 2001, he became a member of theItalian Chamber of Deputies, after the victory of the centre-rightHouse of Freedoms coalition led by Berlusconi in the2001 general election. From 2005 to 2008 he also held the position of regional coordinator inSicily of the Forza Italia party.
After the2008 elections victory by the Berlusconi-led centre-right coalition, Alfano was again elected to Parliament. In May 2008, aged 37, he became the youngestMinister of Justice in the history of the Italian Republic.
The so-calledLodo Alfano, named after him, was a piece of legislation in force between 2008 and 2009 that granted immunity from prosecution to the four highest political offices in Italy (President of the Republic, Presidents of the two Houses of Parliament, and Prime Minister). It was widely criticised as a copy of theLodoSchifani, declared unconstitutional in 2004, and was seen by critics as anad personam law aimed primarily at stopping trials involving Berlusconi. TheLodo Alfano was declared unconstitutional by theItalian Constitutional Court in October 2009.[4]
In 2011 thePeople of Freedom lost both local elections inMilan andNaples, suffered a defeat at the2011 referendums and a group of parliamentarians, close toGianfranco Fini, left the party in opposition to Berlusconi's policies and founded theFuture and Freedom movement.[5] On 1 June 2011 Angelino Alfano was appointed Political Secretary of the People of Freedom by party President Silvio Berlusconi in order to reorganise and lead it in the next election. He was later elected to that post by the 1 July meeting of the party's National Council.[6]
On 24 April 2013, the Vice-Secretary of theDemocratic Party,Enrico Letta, was invited to form a government byPresidentGiorgio Napolitano, after the resignation ofPier Luigi Bersani following weeks of political deadlock after the2013 general election.[7] On 27 April Letta formally accepted the task of leading agrand coalition government with support from the centre-left Democratic Party, the centre-rightPeople of Freedom, and the centristCivic Choice. The government became the first in thehistory of the Italian Republic to include representatives of all the major candidate-coalitions that had competed in the election. While Berlusconi himself refused to participate in the government, his aide Alfano, as Secretary of the PdL, became Deputy Prime Minister andMinister of the Interior.[8]
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On 19 July 2013, theItalian Senate voted a confidence vote on Alfano, promoted byFive Star Movement andLeft Ecology Freedom, after the expulsion from Italy of the wife and the daughter ofMukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh dissident, approved by Alfano.[9] After the vote Alfano was confirmed as minister.
In November 2013, Alfano broke with his mentor Berlusconi: He and otherPeople of Freedom ministers, known as "doves", were strong supporters ofEnrico Letta'sgovernment and refused to join the newForza Italia (FI), founded upon the dissolution of the PdL by Berlusconi. All five PdL ministers, three under-secretaries, 30senators and 27deputies immediately joined a new party calledNew Centre-Right under Alfano's leadership.[10] Most wereChristian democrats and many came from thesouthern regions ofCalabria andSicily.[11]
On 13 February 2014, following his loss in a leadership election againstMatteo Renzi, the new Secretary of theDemocratic Party, Letta announced he would resign as Prime Minister the following day. On 22 February Renzi was sworn in as Prime Minister and Alfano was confirmed as Interior Minister.
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A major problem Alfano has faced, as Interior Minister, isillegal immigration to Italy, which emerged as a result of theLibyan andSyrian civil wars. On 8 August 2014, the Italian Cabinet approved a law-decree contrasting the phenomenon of lawlessness and violence at sporting events and provided for the international protection ofmigrants. In November 2014, the Italian-run rescue optionOperation Mare Nostrum was replaced byFrontex'sOperation Triton, due to the refusal by several EU governments to fund it.
On 19 April 2015, ahuge shipwreck took place in theMediterranean Sea, causing the death of more than 700 migrants fromNorth Africa.[12]
In November 2015 sixSicilian Mafia bosses, close toTotò Riina, were arrested for allegedly planning the assassination of Alfano.[13] In a phone-tapped conversations the gang said they wanted Alfano to meet the same fate asJohn F. Kennedy, theUS Presidentassassinated in an open-top car inDallas in 1963. They also claimed theSicilian Mafia was behind the murder of the American President; in fact a boss accused both Kennedy and Alfano of rising to power with Mafia support then dismissing the crime group.[14]
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On 7 December 2016, Prime MinisterMatteo Renzi announced his resignation, following the rejection of his proposals to overhaul theItalian Senate in the2016 Italian constitutional referendum. A few days later, on 11 December 2016, the Foreign Affairs MinisterPaolo Gentiloni was asked by President Mattarella to form a new government.[15] On the following day Gentiloni was officially sworn in as the new head of the government.[16]
Angelino Alfano was appointed, by the new Prime Minister and by President Mattarella, newMinister of Foreign Affairs, succeeding Gentiloni.[17]
On 18 March 2017, Alfano,Maurizio Lupi,Roberto Formigoni,Beatrice Lorenzin,Fabrizio Cicchitto and other important members of NCD, announced the dissolution of the New Centre-Right and founded the new party,Popular Alternative.[18] Alfano's subsequent aim was to build a centre-right alliance with theForza Italia of his former colleague Silvio Berlusconi, but he strongly opposed a coalition withMatteo Salvini'sNorthern League, a very important partner of thecentre-right coalition, andGiorgia Meloni'sBrothers of Italy, which he considered toopopulist.[19] However, in December 2017, Alfano officially announced that he would not participate anymore in the2018 general election, as his party was deeply split between following the center-left of Renzi, which they were currently supporting in the government, or the center-right of Berlusconi, which had been their original roots.[20] Finally, the remaining bulk of his party under the leadership of his ally Beatrice Lorenzin joined the centre-left coalition asPopular Civic List and won two seats.
In 2002,La Repubblica reported the presence of Alfano at the 1996 wedding of the daughter of Croce Napoli (died 2001), believed by investigators[citation needed] to be the Mafia boss ofPalma di Montechiaro. As shown on an amateur video of the party, Alfano, then a deputy of theSicilian Regional Assembly, was greeted with affection by Croce Napoli. Alfano at first toldLa Repubblica he had "no memory or recollection of this wedding" and that "I never participated in a wedding of Mafia or of their children, I do not know his wife, Gabriella, and I've never heard of Mr. Croce Napoli who was said to be boss of Palma di Montechiaro."[21] Later he said that he remembered that he was actually at the wedding but had been invited by the groom and did not know the bride and her family.[22]
In 2013, he was threatened with ano-confidence motion, since under his watch as interior minister he expelled back toKazakhstan the wife and six-year-old daughter of an exiled opponent of Kazakhstan's president,Nursultan Nazarbayev. The expulsion was linked to Italy's commercial interests in oil- and gas-rich Kazakhstan.[23][24]
He is married to Tiziana Miceli,[25] a civil lawyer. They have two sons.[26]
Media related toAngelino Alfano at Wikimedia Commons| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Minister of Justice 2008–2011 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Deputy Prime Minister of Italy 2013–2014 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Succeeded by | |
| Preceded by | Minister of the Interior 2013–2016 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Minister of Foreign Affairs 2016–2018 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| New office | Secretary of thePeople of Freedom 2011–2013 | Party abolished |
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Letta Cabinet (2013–14) | ||
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Gentiloni Cabinet (2016–18) | ||
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