Akademik

(1931– )

   Economist, banker, and prime minister, Lamberto Dini was born in Florence in March 1931. An economist by profession, Dini worked for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1959 to 1975, rising to the position of executive director in 1976. In 1979, he returned to Italy as director-general of theBanca d’Italia, a position he held until 1994, when he was persuaded to enter politics as minister of the treasury in Silvio Berlusconi’s shortlived first administration (May–December 1994). When Berlusconi’s government collapsed, Dini, who had been one of the government’s handful of ministerial successes, became President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro’schoice to head an interim government of technocrats. Dini shepherded Italy through a difficult year, restoring international confidence in its economic and political stability. His achievements as prime minister seem to have given the former bureaucrat a taste for politics. In February 1996, Dini founded a new centrist party called Rinnovamento Italiano/Italian Renewal (RI) and campaigned in the April 1996 general elections as an ally of Romano Prodi’s Olive Tree Coalition/Ulivo. Following Prodi’s victory, Dini, who was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as deputy for a Florence constituency, was made foreign minister. The Ulivo’s reliance on the Partito di Rifondazione Comunista/Communist Refoundation Party (PRC) troubled his conservative political instincts and made the job of reassuring Italy’s European partners more difficult. Between 2001 and 2003, Dini was one of Italy’s representatives in the “convention” that drew up a draft constitution for the European Union (EU).

   See also European Integration.