Giorgio Napolitano

Giorgio Napolitano ( born June 29, 1925 in Naples) is an Italian politician (PD). Since 15 May 2006, he is the eleventh President of the Italian Republic. With Napolitano for the first time in the history of the Republic of Italy wearing a former exponent of the Italian Communist Party, the office of head of state. In April 2013 he was re-elected as the first Italian President for a second term.

Life

Career in the Italian Communist Party

Napolitano graduated in the 1940s, a law degree from the University of Naples Federico II, which he successfully completed in 1947. In parallel, he was already since 1942 in a communist resistance group active, took various actions against the ruling fascists as part of the Resistance.

1945 Napolitano joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1953 and deputy in the Italian Chamber of Deputies. Political opponents accused him at the time - how many other Communists in the 50s - before, he trivializing the crimes of Stalinism.

Napolitano later rose in the National Committee of his party and was one of the most influential personalities of the PCI. He has always been considered one of the leading representatives of the moderate reformist wing of the party. Thus, to improve living conditions of the workers and social justice to be achieved mainly through reforms ( hence the name Miglioristi ) and no need for a revolutionary overthrow of the system. He distanced himself there clear from Soviet communism - as he criticized about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, advocated a collaboration with the PSI and the integration of his country into the European Union and NATO. His greatest adversary was about Enrico Berlinguer, which processed some of his ideas in the concept of Euro-Communism, but from Napolitano's view did not go far enough. After the instrumental -driven by him converting the Communist Party of the Democrats of the Sinistra ( Left Democrats ) in 1991, he remained active in leading political functions.

In his capacity as a foreign policy spokesman for his party, he came often with his own officials against each other as he entered for a close alignment of his country to the United States. "We must resist the temptation to make America the specter of the Left once again ," he said in 1991 at a party congress. When he justified the international US-dominated coalition and its military intervention in Iraq - Kuwait war, he also earned boos.

From 1992 to 1994, Napolitano President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies ( Camera dei deputati ); 1996 to 1998 he served as Minister of the Interior. Member of the European Parliament he was from 1999 to 2004. In October 2005, he was appointed by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, together with Sergio Pininfarina senator for life.

Tenure as President

On May 7, 2006 Napolitano was proposed by the then Prime Minister Romano Prodi as a compromise candidate for the office of the Italian President. On 10 May 2006 he was elected on the fourth ballot for president. Napolitano is regarded as grand master of Italian politics, as modest and moderate. In November 2011, his work was held in conjunction with the resignation of longtime Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi worldwide attention. Napolitano commissioned 13 November 2011 Mario Monti to form a new government.

In December 2012 - Monti had previously announced his retirement and a comeback attempt Berlusconi in parliamentary elections in Italy in 2013 - las Napolitano in a speech to politicians of Italy's political class " thoroughly the Levites " (FAZ ). Parliament he dissolved on December 22, 2012. The President may, in the last six months of his term, the Parliament only be resolved if the mandate of Parliament would regularly end up being half a year before or after the term of office of the President. This would have been the case in May 2013, which is why Napolitano could make the early resolution by three months. Due to the seven -year term of the President of Italy, which ends on 15 May, 2013, a new election in April was necessary.

On April 18, 2013 Franco Marini ran in two rounds of voting for the office; in both, he did not reach the required two-thirds majority. In the third and fourth ballot Romano Prodi was begun; to a further ballot he renounced. For the fifth ballot, therefore, 266 of a total of 1007 members of the election meeting not even published, the remaining tasks in their majority from blank ballots. In this situation, the 87 -year-old Napolitano appeared on April 20 in the sixth ballot at the request of prominent politicians from different political camps, contrary to its previous intention for election and was re-elected with 738 votes. On April 22, was the swearing in for his second term after he had recently resigned from formal grounds, since his first term would have ended regularly only on May 15.

Others

In his youth Napolitano worked among other things as an actor. He is married to Maria Bittoni Clio, with whom he has two sons.

1997 Giorgio Napolitano was honored with the Leibniz -ring Hanover.

Works

• On the way to the historic compromise. A conversation about development and program of the KPI. Frankfurt / Main 1978 ISBN 3-518-00851- X ( A conversation between Giorgio Napolitano and Eric Hobsbawm )