Romano Prodi

(born August 9 1939) is a centre-left Italian politician. Since May 17, 2006, he has served as Prime Minister of Italy following the narrow victory of his l'Unione coalition over the Casa delle Libertà led by Silvio Berlusconi in the April 2006 Italian elections. He was previously Prime Minister from 1996 to 1998 and President of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004.

Romano Prodi is often nicknamed il Professore (the Professor) because of his academic background. He also has another derogatory nickname, il Mortadella (after the Bolognese luncheon meat).

Personal

Romano Prodi was born in Scandiano, in the province of Reggio Emilia (Emilia-Romagna). He is the eighth of nine children of Mario Prodi, an engineer originally from a peasant family, and Enrica, elementary teacher. He has six brothers, five of them university professors (including a Member of the European Parliament, Vittorio Prodi), and two sisters.

He married Flavia Franzoni in 1969. They have two sons, Giorgio and Antonio. He and his family still live in Bologna. Prodi is a devout Roman Catholic.BBC News — Romano Prodi

Academic career

After completing his secondary education at the Liceo Ludovico Ariosto in Reggio Emilia, Prodi graduated in law at the Sacro Cuore Catholic University of Milan in 1961 and carried out postgraduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

In 1963 he became a teaching assistant for Beniamino Andreatta in the department of economics and the faculty of Political Science of the University of Bologna, then serving as associate professor (1966) and lastly professor (1971-1999) of industrial organisation and industrial policy. Prodi has also been a visiting professor at Harvard University and the Stanford Research Institute. His research covers mainly competition regulations and the development of small and medium businesses. He is also interested in relations between states and markets and the dynamics of the different capitalistic models.

Prodi has received close to a score of honorary degrees from institutions in Italy, the rest of Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa.

Politics

Beginnings

Prodi used to be a left-wing reformist Christian Democrat and disciple of Beniamino Andreatta, another economist turned politician. During the mid-1970s, he was appointed Minister of Industry in 1978 during Giulio Andreotti's government as technical minister; he held posts on various commissions through the 1980s and early 1990s.

On April 2, 1978, Prodi and other members of the faculty of the University of Bologna passed on a tip about a safe house where Aldo Moro, the former Prime Minister kidnapped by the Red Brigades, was detained. Bizarrely, Prodi claimed he had been given the tip by the founders of the Christian Democratic Party, contacted from beyond the grave via a séance and a Ouija board. While Prodi thought the word Gradoli referred to a town on the outskirts of Rome, it likely referred to the Roman address of a BR safehouse, located at via Gradoli 96. Later, other Italian members of the European Commission claimed that Prodi had invented this story to conceal the real source of the tip, which they believed to have originated in the Italian extraparliamentary left. ^*

Prodi served as chairman of the powerful state-owned industrial holding company IRI - from 1982 to 1989 and again from 1993 to 1994. He twice came under investigation for alleged corruption while he was head of IRI. He was accused of conflict of interest first in connection with contracts awarded to his own economic research company, and secondly over the sale of the loss making state owned food conglomerate SME to the multinational Unilever - for which he had for a time been a paid consultant; but, for both accusations, he obtained a full acquittal.

The Olive Tree

In 1995 he became Chairman of the centre-left Olive Tree coalition, and in the 1996 election defeated Silvio Berlusconi and the Pole of Freedoms, being consequently appointed as Prime Minister. His government fell in 1998 when the Communist Refoundation Party withdrew support, allowing the formation of a new government under Massimo D'Alema (many claim that D'Alema caused the collapse of Prodi in order to become Prime Minister himself). This happened by only one vote in the Chamber of Deputies in the vote of a mozione di sfiducia, an act with which either House of Parliament can withdraw its support to the Government (it has been the first and so far the only time such a vote has been called in the history of republican Italy, many Governments having fallen by dimission after the rejection of an important bill, such as the general budget of the State).

European time

Prodi, a well-known European Union supporter, was appointed on September 1999 as the President of the European Commission, with a large support from both Christian Democrat and Social Democrat European parties. During his presidency, in 2002 eleven EU countries officially adopted euro as their new currency, replacing a number of national currencies. Successively, in 2004 the European Union was enlarged to several Eastern Europe countries, most of them formerly part of the communist bloc. Prodi's mandate expired 18 November 2004.

Back to Italian politics

After the end of his time at the Presidency of the European Commission, Prodi returned back to Italian politics at the helm of the centre-left coalition, The Union.

In order to officially state his candidacy for the 2006 general election, Prodi agreed to participate in an apposite primary election, held on October 2005, which he won with over 70% of votes. Over four million people for the occasion went to cast a vote in the primary election. He thus led his coalition to the electoral campaign preceding the election, eventually won by a very narrow margin of 25,000 votes, and a final majority of two seats in the Senate, on April 10. Prodi's appointment was somewhat delayed, as the outgoing President of the Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, ended his mandate in May, not having enough time for the usual procedure (consultations made by the President, appointment of a Prime Minister, motion of confidence and oath of office). After the acrimonious election of Giorgio Napolitano to replace Ciampi, Prodi could proceed with his transition to government. On May 16 he was invited by Napolitano to form a government. The following day, Prodi and his cabinet were sworn in.

In power once more

Romano Prodi and his cabinet were sworn in on 17 May, 2006. Prodi's cabinet drew in politicians from across his the centre-left winning coalition, in addition to Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, an unelected former official of the European Central Bank with no partisan membership.

Romano Prodi obtained the support for his cabinet on 19 May at the Senate and on 23 May at the Chamber of Deputies. Also on May 18, Prodi laid out some sense of his new foreign policy when he pledged to withdraw Italian troops from Iraq and called the Iraq war a "grave mistake that has not solved but increased the problem of security". (Guardian)

The Prodi II Cabinet
Ministry	Minister	Party
Prime Minister	Romano Prodi	No affiliation (on Olive Tree list)
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs	Massimo D'Alema	DS
Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Culture and Tourism	Francesco Rutelli	Daisy
Minister of the Interior	Giuliano Amato	No affiliation (on Olive Tree list)
Minister of Economy and Finance	Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa	No affiliation ("technical" appointee)
Minister of Defence	Arturo Parisi	Daisy
Minister of Justice	Clemente Mastella	UDEUR
Minister of Economic Development	Pier Luigi Bersani	DS
Minister of Infrastructures	Antonio Di Pietro	Italy of Values
Minister of Agriculture	Paolo De Castro	No affiliation (on Olive Tree list)
Minister of Education	Giuseppe Fioroni	Daisy
Minister of University and Research	Fabio Mussi	DS
Minister of Health	Livia Turco	DS
Minister of Communications	Paolo Gentiloni	Daisy
Minister of Labour	Cesare Damiano	DS
Minister of Social Solidarity	Paolo Ferrero	Communist Refoundation
Minister of Environment	Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio	Greens
Minister of Transports	Alessandro Bianchi	No affiliation (on PdCI list)
Minister of European Politics and International Trade	Emma Bonino	Rose in the Fist
Minister without portfolio (Reforms, Parliamentary Relations)	Vannino Chiti	DS
Minister without portfolio (Public Functions, Innovation)	Luigi Nicolais	DS
Minister without portfolio (Regional Affairs)	Linda Lanzillotta	Daisy
Minister without portfolio (Platform Accomplishment)	Giulio Santagata	Daisy
Minister without portfolio (Equal Opportunities)	Barbara Pollastrini	DS
Minister without portfolio (Youth Politics, Sports)	Giovanna Melandri	DS
Minister without portfolio (Family)	Rosy Bindi	Daisy

Notes

External links

Personal website
Official Site of the President of the European Commission - Includes a curriculum vitae, from which some of the information in this article was drawn
Clarifying the SME case

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