AND’ Raffaele Fitto the ‘card’ that Giorgia Meloni will play in Europeto secure a weighty role – hopefully also an executive vice-presidency – in the second government led by Ursula von der Leyen. A “painful choice”, by admission of the Prime Minister herself, who will have to give up one of the most trusted men and closest to her. His nicknames are various. The ‘golden boy of Tavoliere’, the ‘enfant prodige of Maglie’, the ‘child’, for his clean and youthful face. Born in ’69, from Maglie, the town that gave birth to Aldo Moro, Raffaele Fitto has always been very reserved, never a word out of place.
Who is
With a soft and gentle manner. Very Christian Democrat, given his militancy, just twenty years old, in the White Whale that was. Married to Adriana since 2005, two children, ‘Raffa’, as his friends call him, is the son of art: his father, Salvatore, was the Christian Democrat president of the Puglia Region from 1985 to ’88, when he died at just 47 years old in a car accident. And it was precisely this year in which at just 19 years old his second son Raffaele (he has two brothers), began his militancy in the DC, with which he was elected to the Regional Council of Puglia in 1990. In ’94, the year Silvio Berlusconi entered the political arena, he graduated in law and, with the dissolution of the DC, he joined Rocco Buttiglione’s Italian Popular Party, which he would follow in the alliance with the newly formed Forza Italia.
In 1995 he was reappointed to the Region, where he became Councilor for Tourism and Vice President. Four years later he arrived at the European Parliament with the Cav. party. But he remained in office for only one year because in 2000 he ran for the leadership of Puglia, becoming the youngest governor in Italy. He tried again in the 2005 regional elections but was defeated by Nichi Vendola. The following year he was elected to Parliament as a deputy of FI and in 2008 he was appointed Minister for Regional Affairs in the Berlusconi quater.
In 2014 he returned to Strasbourg with the victory in the European elections, but despite being considered Berlusconi’s favourite, he broke with Forza Italia because of the Nazarene pact made with Matteo Renzi. Fitto launches the new project of the ‘Conservatives and Reformists’, which infuriates the blue leader: ”Do what you want, it takes a burden off us”. The split (the umpteenth, after that of Angelino Alfano) is now official, irreversible. In 2017 he launches ‘Direzione Italia’, but after the failure in the 2018 elections the party federates with Fratelli d’Italia for the 2019 European elections, in which Fitto will be re-elected. In 2020, he runs again for governor of Puglia, but loses against the outgoing president Michele Emiliano, his sworn enemy.
Until In the political elections of September 25th he was re-elected as a member of parliament with Fratelli d’Italia and in the new centre-right government with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni he returns to the role of minister but this time as head of a heavy ministry, which includes European Affairs, Territorial Cohesion and the PNRR. Hence the nickname ‘Mister Pnrr’who immediately distinguished him as a strong man in the Meloni government, also making him feel some envy for the centralization of powers in his ministry. But the prime minister trusts him blindly, like few others: since the first months at Palazzo Chigi she has been surprised by his workaholism, pleased by his reserve with the press, by the reliability and preparation he shows on the many dossiers on the table. It is thanks to ”Raffa’ if Giorgia has managed to assert herself in Europe and become the leader of Ecr’, say those who know Fitto very well.
The tragic death of his father changed his life. Like all the boys of his age, he loved football (he played in the fourth division and in the Maglie youth team), scooters and discos. At his father’s funeral, he spoke up and moved everyone. Then, a few months later, against the will of half of the DC in Puglia, he ran for the Regional Council and made a splash. From that moment on, politics absorbed everything. Even though his passion for football remained intact. And it continues through the goals of his second-born Gabriele, a promising striker in the Lazio youth team. “He’s a thoroughbred, my prosthesis”, Berlusconi said of him before the ‘split’. The key to his success is to make himself concave and convex, like the blue leader.
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