The President of the European Parliament is dead, the announcement was made last night. In office since 2019, the Italian David Sassoli was 65 years old. He had been hospitalized since December 26 because of severe immune deficiency. Since the election of MEPs by direct universal suffrage in 1979, this is the first time that a President of Parliament has died in office. The emotion is great in Italy.
With our correspondents in Rome and Brussels, Anne Tréca and Pierre Benazet
The President of the European Parliament, the Italian Social Democrat David Sassoli, died on the night of Monday to Tuesday in Italy, at the age of 65, his spokesman said. “David Sassoli died on January 11 at 1:15 am at the CRO (oncology reference center) in Aviano, Italy, where he had been hospitalized” since the end of December, announced on Twitter Roberto Cuillo, David’s spokesperson. Sassoli.
The President of the European Council Charlis Michel paid tribute to this ” great passionate, sincere, generous, authentic European “. ” He contributed with competence, intelligence and elegance to forging important decisions at the head of the European Parliament. He adds.
From journalism to politics
The Italians discovered David Sassoli on their television screens in the early 1990s, but this former print journalist, born in Florence in 1956, especially acquired his notoriety when he became the presenter of the mid-day newspaper on the Rai. , then 8 p.m. It is a reference for national information. A few years later, in 2009, he left television when he was elected to the European Parliament, under the colors of the PD, the Partido Democratico. It will then become President of Parliament in July 2019 – the institution’s second Italian president – on behalf of the Socialist Group.
I think he changed Europe …
Simona Bonafè, Italian MEP vice-president of the Socialists & Democrats group
David Sassoli wanted to cut European funds to the populists, defend at all costs the values of the Union, parliamentary democracy, freedom of conscience, women’s rights… A great defender of social democracy, he was personally involved, as in defense of the Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, which also earned him to be on Moscow’s blacklist.
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But his mandate was largely weighed down by the pandemic and the hemicycles of Strasbourg and Brussels are also partly still in hybrid operation, with some deputies between presence and virtual for the sessions. David Sassoli himself was ill for a long time, because after leukemia he suffered from pneumonia this fall. He had to interrupt his functions and his term as head of the European Parliament which was due to end this month anyway. His succession will be decided next week.
He is someone who was very accessible, very direct, very close to parliamentarians …
David Cormand, MEP Europe Ecology The Greens
Since the wee hours of the night and this Tuesday morning, tributes have poured in from all over Europe to praise the human qualities of David Sassoli, unanimously praised for his kindness and by some for his grip at the presidency of the debates of the European hemicycle … From Brussels to Paris or Rome, the comments of those involved in European life are unanimous: the European Union has lost with David Sassoli a humanist and a passionate European.