Roberto Coelho said in a tweet on Twitter that “David Sassoli died on January 11 at 1:15 am in the oncology reference center in Aviano, Italy, where he had been receiving treatment” since the end of December.
“The place and time of the funeral will be announced in the next few hours,” he added.
Coelho had announced on Monday afternoon that Sassoli had been in hospital since December 26 “due to serious complications caused by a defect in the immune system,” noting that the President of the European Parliament had subsequently canceled all his official activities.
Sassoli, who had previously suffered from leukemia, was hospitalized at the end of September with pneumonia that kept him out of Parliament for several weeks.
Sassoli entered the political fray through the media portal, as he was an anchor for television news in his country, and in 2019 he was elected President of the European Parliament for a term of two and a half years, that is, half of the five-year legislative term.
Although his term at the head of Parliament was renewable when it expires this month, he had previously announced that he would not run for a second term.
The late was a member of the “Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats” (center-left), the second largest parliamentary bloc in the European Parliament after the European People’s Party (center-right).
The European Parliament is scheduled to hold a session next Tuesday to elect a new president to succeed Sassoli.
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