Francesco Rutelli

He is President of ANICA (Italian Association of Cinema, Audiovisual and Multimedia Companies), elected in 2016, unanimously re-elected for the 2020-2022 term, and ANICA Servizi. Legal representative of MIA (Italian Audiovisual Market).

Francesco Rutelli's role in the Daisy — a party with strong ties with Italian Christian heritage — is considered by his opponents a singular upshot after a fairly erratic journey within Italian progressive politics, mainly because of his past social-libertarian and green experiences.

He got a Diploma in International Organizations from the Italian Society for International Organization, SIOI. He also has been the Honorary President (2013-2014) of the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin). He promoted the "Cultural and Creative Industries Italy-China " Forums (Beijing, 2014; Milan, Venice, 2015). He co-chaired (2015) the Silk Road Cities Alliance (Beijing).

In October 2009 he announced his intention to leave the Democratic Party. After leaving the Democratic Party, he co-founded the Alliance for Italy (ApI), a centrist, liberal party which ran joint lists with the Union of the Centre (UdC) in most regions in the regional elections of March 2010. In December 2010, the ApI became a founding member of the new centrist formation New Pole for Italy, and Rutelli became one of the new group's main leaders, along with UdC leader Pier Ferdinando Casini and Gianfranco Fini, the leader of the Future and Freedom party and former leader of the post-fascist Italian Social Movement and the national-conservative National Alliance, until 2012.

In February 2008 he announced his intention to run again as mayor of Rome leading a local centre-left coalition, but lost the local elections on 28 April 2008 against centre-right Gianni Alemanno.

Rutelli was defeated by Silvio Berlusconi in the 2001 general election as Prime Minister candidate for the centre-left Olive Tree coalition, gathering 16.4 million votes, against 16.9 million of the right wing coalition. He was also one of the founders of the Democrats, which became part of Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy. Rutelli led the party until it merged into the Democratic Party on 14 October 2007.

In 2006 he was named Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Culture in the cabinet of Romano Prodi during Prodi's second term as Italian Prime Minister.

Rutelli founded the European Democratic Party, together with the French political leader Francois Bayrou. He was unanimously voted co-President of the Party (2004-2019). The members of the EDP in the European Parliament sit in the ALDE Group (Alliance of Democrats and Liberals) and then the Renew Group. At the end of the 1990s he was member of the Committee of Regions, where he chaired the Urban Policies Committee, and was an Advisor for Urban Development to the former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali.

He has been again elected to the Camera dei Deputati in 2001 and 2006, and to the Senate in 2008, when he became the Chairman of COPASIR (Parliamentary Committee of Overview on Intelligence), where he drafted and published reports on human trafficking as a strategic threat, and the first Report to the Parliament and the Government on Cyberspace and its implications for national security.

He also served as a Member of European Parliament from 1999 to 2004. There he's been committed to promote initiatives for the abolition of death penalty, freedom of information improvement and against corruption. From the mid-1990s onwards his views appeared increasingly moderate.

He has been elected to the European Parliament (1999-2004), sitting in the ALDE Group, introducing Reports and many Parliamentary initiatives. He has been one of the main promoter of the Referendum for a stronger integration between Italy and the EU (held in 1989, with an overwhelming YES vote – 88%); he has been awarded the Crocodile-Altiero Spinelli Prize, as a proEuropean personality.

He was then chosen as Ministry of Environment and Urban Areas in 1993, although he resigned after one day in the post. That same year, he was first elected Mayor of Rome as centre-left coalition candidate, defeating centre-right candidate Gianfranco Fini. Being reelected in 1997, with 985.000 popular votes, the highest in the history of the City, Rutelli held the position until 2001.

First elected as deputy in 1983, confirming his office in 1987 and 1992, he then joined the Federation of the Greens in the late 1980s, becoming one of the party's leading figures, and developing new environmental campaigns.

Born in Rome, he entered politics joining the Radical Party, for which he was then elected secretary in 1980, aged 26. With the Radicals, Rutelli championed humanitarian and libertarian policies such as unilateral disarmament, abolition of nuclear power plants, conscientious objection to the compulsory National Service, eradication of world hunger, decriminalisation of the use of cannabis. At those times the political action of the Italian Radicals was self-defined as inspired by the Gandhian non-violent movement.

Rutelli quit University in 1977; 40 years later, at the age of 62, a degree in Landscape and environmental planning and design, with highest grade and honors by Università La Sapienza and Tuscia University.

Francesco Rutelli (born 14 June 1954) is President of Anica, National Association of Film and Audiovisual Industry, since October 2016. He also chairs the "Centro per un Futuro Sostenibile" (Centre for a Sustainable Future – a bipartisan think tank on climate change and environmental issues). He was during 15 years co-president of the European Democratic Party, a centrist European political party and he is now President of the Institute of European Democrats, EDP political foundation. He has been Mayor of Rome 1994–2001, and president of the centrist party Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy 2002–2007. He was the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture and Tourism in the second cabinet of Prime Minister Romano Prodi 2006–2008.. Currently he also chairs Priorità Cultura (Culture First); Incontro di Civiltà (Civilizations Meeting); Videocittà, Moving Images Festival (Rome, 2018-2019).

Mario Rutelli (his great-grandfather) was the author of the Najadi Fountain in Rome (1901), the Anita Garibaldi’s Monument, and dozens of public and private sculptures; among them, some of the most important monuments in Palermo (Sicily). Another great-grandfather, Felice Martini from Parma, was the Architect of the latest renovation (1873) of the historic Arsenale in Venice. Grandfather Ottavio Marini was the Director of Antiquities and Belle Arti of the Italian Government (1910-20’s). The Rutelli family, in Palermo, is associated to many relevant developments: the construction of Teatro Massimo, the buildings in via Roma and on the seaside, Mondello’s liberty buildings.