Italian politician

Giuliano Amato OMRI (Italian pronunciation::; born 13 May 1938) is an Italian politician who twice served as Prime Minister of Italy, first from 1992 to 1993 and again from 2000 to 2001.

Later, he was Vice President of the Convention on the Future of Europe that drafted the European Cons*ution and headed the Amato Group. He is commonly nicknamed dottor Sottile, (which means "Doctor Subtilis", the sobriquet of the Scottish Medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus, a reference to his political subtlety). From 2006 to 2008, he was the Minister of the Interior in Romano Prodi's government.

He has served on the Cons*utional Court of Italy since September 2013, to which he was appointed by President Giorgio Napolitano. He is serving as President of the Court since 29 January 2022.

Contents

• 1 Biography
• 2 World Justice Project
• 3 President of Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies
• 4 Personal views
• 5 Electoral history
  • 5.1 First-past-the-post elections
• 6 References
• 7 External links

Biography

Born in Turin into a Sicilian family, Amato grew up in Tuscany. He received a first degree in law from the University of Pisa in 1960, while attending the prestigious Collegio Medico-Giuridico of the Scuola Normale Superiore, which today is Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. As a Fulbright grantee, he received a master's degree in comparative law from Columbia Law School in 1963. After teaching at the Universities of Modena, Perugia and Florence, he worked as professor of Italian and Comparative Cons*utional Law at the University of Rome La Sapienza from 1975 to 1997.

Amato began his political career in 1958, when he joined the Italian Socialist Party. He was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 1993. He was Undersecretary of State to the Prime Minister's office from 1983 to 1987, Deputy Prime Minister from 1987 to 1988, and Minister for the Treasury from 1987 to 1989.

From June 1992 to April 1993, Amato served as Prime Minister. During those ten months, a series of corruption scandals rocked Italy and swept away almost an entire cl* of political leaders. Amato himself was never implicated, notwithstanding how close he was to Bettino Craxi, a central figure in the corruption system.

As Prime Minister, Amato responded effectively to two devaluations of the lira in the wake of currency speculation that led Italy to be expelled from the European Monetary System by cutting the budget deficit drastically, thus taking the first steps in the road that would bring Italy to adopt the Euro.

At a point, his government was harshly contested because of a decree that suddenly moved the competence for corruption investigations into the hands of the police, which, being controlled directly by the government, would have not been independent. Fearing that the new system would have effectively blocked investigations on political corruption, Italians took to the streets in m*ive, spontaneous rallies. President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro refused to sign the decree, deeming it blatantly uncons*utional. While his justice minister Giovanni Conso took the blame, it has been disputed whether Amato was a victim of cir*stances or whether he really wanted to save the corruption-ridden system.

At the end of his period as Prime Minister, Amato gave a speech to the Parliament in which he solemnly promised that at end of his term he would retire from politics, stressing that his was a true commitment and that he would not break this promise as some politicians (whom he characterized as "mandarins") used to do. However, this promise was short-lived; Amato has regularly come under criticism for having made such a solemn commitment and failing to keep it.

Amato was President of the Italian an*rust authority from November 1994 to December 1997, Minister for Ins*utional Reforms in M*imo D'Alema's first government from October 1998 to May 1999, and, once again, Treasury Minister in D'Alema's second government from December 1999 to April 2000. Amato was nearly nominated for the Presidency of the Republic and was a close contender to replace Michel Camdessus as head of the International Monetary Fund.

Amato served as Prime Minister again from April 2000 to May 2001. He promoted economic compe*iveness as well as social protection. In addition to economic reforms, he pushed ahead with political and ins*utional reforms, trying to deal with a weak executive and fragmented legislature.

In December 2001, European Union leaders at the European Council in Laeken appointed Amato and former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene to be Vice Presidents of the Convention on the Future of Europe to *ist former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the drafting of the new European Cons*ution. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002.

Amato was a Member of the Senate representing the cons*uency of Grosseto in Tuscany from 2001 to 2006. In 2006, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Olive Tree list, and he was named Minister of the Interior in Romano Prodi's centre-left government.

Since 2010, he also leads advanced seminar cl*es at the Master in International Public Affairs of the LUISS School of Government.

On 12 September 2013, President Giorgio Napolitano appointed Amato as judge on the Cons*utional Court of Italy, where he has served since then. On 16 September 2020 Amato ran for the position of President of the Cons*utional Court, but lost in the second round of voting against Mario Rosario Morelli who obtained nine votes, while Giancarlo Coraggio obtained five and Amato received one. He was subsequently made Vice President by Morelli. He was confirmed in this position by Coraggio who became president in December 2020.

Amato is married to Ms Diana Vincenzi, a professor of Family Law at the University of Rome. They have two children, Elisa and Lorenzo, and five grandchildren, Giulia, Marco, Simone, Elena and Irene. As of September 2020, Amato is a member of the Italian Aspen Ins*ute.

World Justice Project

Giuliano Amato serves as an Honorary Co-Chair for the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project works to lead a global, multidisciplinary effort to strengthen the Rule of Law for the development of communities of opportunity and equity.

President of Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

In 2012 Giuliano Amato was appointed as President of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. As alumnus of Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies (attending the prestigious Collegio Medico-Giuridico of the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, which today is Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies), he guarded close contact with the university, previously heading Sant'Anna Alumni *ociation.

He was appointed as President of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies on 21 February 2012 by the Academic Senate of Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies and by a Decree of the Minister Francesco Profumo of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Italy). He resigned from his post at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies after being appointed to the Cons*utional Court in September 2013.

Personal views

In 2011, Amato declared that Italian creativity is not supported by an adequate efficiency of the organization of its public and private en*ies. He believes it had a role in the lost hope in the future and in the sense of a common national iden*y, as well as it had not been yet perfectioned as whole in a way that was congruent with its essence. That loss had favoured the flourishing of xenophobia and purported regional iden*ies, such as the Lega Nord movement.

Amato thinks that the brigandage in Southern Italy after 1861 was an unfair and unlawful movement that cannot be seen as form of antinational rebellion; however, the soldiers and the officials of the Borbonic Army who joined the movement cannot be defined as betrayers of the ongoing Italy. It is also not credible the Expedition of the Thousand could have caused the annexation of the Southern Italy to the Kingdom of Sardinia by itself, while the main political and cultural foundations had been thrown by the works of intellectuals like Francesco Mario Pagano and Vincenzo Cuoco produced in the 1790s. If he did not believe the national iden*y is always something of more important than sub-national or sovra-national ones, Amato believes in the multi-layer iden*ies model proposed by Alberto Banti in a way for which the European iden*y strengthens the Italian iden*y even when they live and work in a foreign country. According to him, the Italian iden*y is kept alive in any country in which they should have gone.

Electoral history

First-past-the-post elections

References

External links

• Giuliano Amato's Project Syndicate op/eds
• Giuliano Amato teaching at the Master in International Public Affairs at the LUISS Guido Carli University School of Government in Rome.
• Works by or about Giuliano Amato in libraries (WorldCat catalog)