Receive free updates on Italian politics
We will send you one myFT Daily overview email finalizing the latter Italian politics news every morning.
Former Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, who played a crucial role in helping restore market confidence in his country amid the chaos of the eurozone debt crisis, has died at the age of 98.
As head of state, Napolitano helped Italy through the collapse of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s last government at the height of the debt crisis in 2011, when Italy’s dire economic situation threatened the future of the European Monetary Union.
His choice of technocrat Mario Monti, a respected economics professor and former European commissioner, to lead a large national coalition to tackle Italy’s predicament was widely welcomed by other eurozone governments as well as the European Union. Central bank.
In a statement, Italy’s current president, Sergio Mattarella, praised Napolitano – who started his political career as a member of the Italian Communist Party in the fight against fascism – for his fight for the “peace and progress of Italy and Europe”.
Napolitano “promoted the strengthening of community institutions for an increasingly authoritative and united Europe,” Mattarella said in his condolence message.
Born in Naples in 1925, Napolitano spent the first decades of his political career in the Italian Communist Party, then the largest in Western Europe. As an elected member of the national parliament, he served for many years as President and Minister of Home Affairs, and later held positions in the European Parliament and elsewhere in the EU administration.
But it was during his two terms as president, from 2006 to 2015, that Napolitano found his place at the center of Italian politics, bringing together national players to tackle overwhelming challenges.
After Berlusconi resigned in 2011 – under intense market pressure from allies enraged by his unwillingness or inability to implement necessary market reforms – Napolitano appointed Monti. His choice was warmly welcomed and the yield on Italian ten-year bonds fell from almost 7 percent at the time to just 2 percent three years later.
In the aftermath of his intervention, Napolitano’s personal popularity and credibility were such that, after an inconclusive general election, the mainstream parties persuaded him to remain as president for a second term. This set the precedent that incumbent Mattarella followed when he also accepted a second term last year.
Napolitano resigned in 2015, halfway through his second term, saying that at 89 he was too old to continue.