Luigi Berlinguer

Luigi Berlinguer ( born July 25, 1932 in Sassari, Sardinia ) is an Italian legal historian and politician (PD, originally PCI). Since the European elections of 2009, he is member of the European Parliament in the fraction of S & D. Previously, he served as 1985-1994 president of the University of Siena and 1996-2000 Italian Minister of Education. Luigi Berlinguer is a cousin of Enrico Berlinguer.

Career

Career start to 1968

After studying law, which he finished in 1955 with top grade, Berlinguer worked as a research assistant at the University of Sassari in 1959 and conducted research among other things, Domenico Alberto Azuni and the history of maritime and commercial law. At the same time he became politically active during his studies. From 1952 he was chairman of the Federazione Comunista giovanile, the youth organization of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI ); In 1956 he was elected to the Sardinian Provincial Parliament, in 1963 in the Italian Parliament ( Camera dei deputati ). Here he worked among others in the Committee on Constitutional Affairs, where he used mainly for school and university reform.

Scientific career 1968-1993

1968 different Berlinguer out of the Parliament, to accept a professorship in the exegesis of the Italian sources of law at the University of Sassari. From 1969 to 1970 he was at the University of Siena, but then returned back to Sassari, where he became professor. He was Dean of the Law Faculty, where he campaigned for the introduction of a new degree in political science in 1972.

In 1973, Berlinguer again called to Siena, where he took over the chair of the exegesis of the Italian legal sources and from 1988 also for Italian legal history and a new Department of Political Science founded, which he headed from 1984 to 1987. From 1975 to 1982 he was a member of the PCI in the regional parliament of Tuscany. In addition, he headed from 1971 to 1984, the magazine Democrazia e diritto in which he lobbied for an administrative reform. Because of this experience, he was from 1982 to 1985 and chairman of the party 's internal Commission for the reform of public administration.

1985 Berlinguer was elected Rector of the University of Siena, a post which he retained until 1994. From 1986 he was a member of the Ministerial Commission for Higher Education, 1989 Secretary General of the Italian Rectors' Conference. In these positions, he exercised influence on the modernization and Europeanization of the Italian university system and the expansion of university autonomy. At the same time he continued his scientific work and published several works, which are now mainly concerned with political science and legal policy issues.

Political career from 1993

In 1993, Berlinguer the management of the University of Siena on to become Italian university and research ministers in the cabinet of Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, however, occurred only a few days after taking office in protest against parliament's decision back in connection with the affair Mani pulite. In the 1994 elections he was the top candidate of the list of the Left Democrats ( the successor party to the PCI) in Tuscany a seat in the Camera dei deputati, where he remained until 2001. After 1996 he was a member of the Committee on Constitutional issues first, he was from 2000 to 2001 Chairman of the Committee for European policy.

From 1996 to 2000 Berlinguer was in the governments led by Romano Prodi and Massimo D' Alema under Italian Minister of Education. He sat down for an extensive reform of the Italian educational and research environment to meet the increasing international networking and the importance of education to the economy. In 1997, he pushed through a far-reaching school reform, which became known as Berlinguer reform. Among other things, various types of schools were combined and introduced a kind of vocational school as an alternative to regular education. The reform, however, was controversial, as she led the critic 's view to higher dropout rates, as students left the regular school without actually continue their education in a vocational school; In 2003, the Italian school system was reformed again therefore fundamentally. Signed in 1999 Berlinguer together with the German, French and British Education Minister, the Sorbonne Declaration, which prepared the Bologna Process to create a European Higher Education Area.

2001 Berlinguer was elected to the Senato della Repubblica, in which he was the education and the European Affairs Committee. The following year he was also elected by the Parliament as a member of the Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, of self-government body of the Italian judiciary, which he served until 2006. He sat in particular for the establishment of the European network of legal self-governing bodies a, whose first President from 2004 to 2007. The mandate in the Senate, he resigned on 24 July 2002.

In the European elections in Italy in 2009 as a regional Berlinguer top candidate of the Partito Democratico, the successor party of the Left Democrats, was elected to the European Parliament. Here he is Vice Chair of the Legal Committee and a member of the Delegation for relations with India. He is also a deputy in the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the Delegation to the EU-Croatia Joint Parliamentary Committee

Awards

Berlinguer has received several honorary doctorates awarded, among others, of the University of Toronto, the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, the University of Paris V, the Universidad de Buenos Aires and the Università degli Studi Roma Tre. In addition, he received several political honors, including the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (1992 ), the German Federal Cross of Merit (1998) and the Order of the French Legion of Honour ( 2005).