21 Facts About Eugenia Roccella

Eugenia Maria Roccella was born on 15 November 1953 and is an Italian journalist and politician, who has been serving as Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the Meloni Cabinet since 22 October 2022.

Eugenia Roccella is a member of Brothers of Italy, the party led by the prime minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni.

Eugenia Roccella was born in Bologna, and raised in Riesi, Sicily, the hometown of her father Franco Eugenia Roccella.

Eugenia Roccella was a founder of the Radical Party and served in the Chamber of Deputies from 1979 to 1983 and again from 1984 to 1987.

Eugenia Roccella moved to the Italian Socialist Party in 1986, and was the mayor of his hometown from 1991 to 1992.

Eugenia Roccella graduated in Modern Literature from the Sapienza University of Rome.

Eugenia Roccella ran unsuccessfully as a candidate for her father's party in the 1979 election.

Eugenia Roccella has written for Il Giornale, Libero, Il Foglio and Avvenire.

In 2007, Eugenia Roccella was the spokesperson of Family Day, a demonstration in favour of the traditional Catholic family.

Eugenia Roccella returned to politics by being elected in the 2008 Italian general election for Silvio Berlusconi's The People of Freedom, and was Undersecretary for Welfare and Health.

Eugenia Roccella joined the New Centre-Right in 2013 and was one of the founders of Identity and Action in 2015.

On 22 October 2022, Eugenia Roccella was sworn in as the Minister for Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities in the Meloni Cabinet.

Eugenia Roccella has described herself as a conservative feminist and a post-feminist.

Eugenia Roccella is opposed to abortion, saying "I am a feminist and feminists have never considered abortion to be a right".

Eugenia Roccella opposes in vitro fertilisation, and in 2013 founded Di mamma ce n'e una sola, an organisation against surrogacy.

In 2018, Eugenia Roccella said that she would work to repeal the recognition of same-sex civil unions in Italy, which had been legalised two years earlier.

Eugenia Roccella opposed the Scalfarotto and Zan bills that supported LGBT rights in Italy, describing the latter as a curb on freedom of expression.

In 2023, Eugenia Roccella stated that psychologists affirm the need or right for children to have a father and a mother, as opposed to same-sex parents.

Eugenia Roccella's statement was rebutted by the psychological profession, first through the representatives of their professional boards in several Italian regions, then by the president of the whole national board, David Lazzari.

Eugenia Roccella was Undersecretary for Health in 2009 during the controversy surrounding Eluana Englaro, a woman who spent 17 years in a persistent vegetative state because the state refused her family's wish to remove her feeding tube.

Eugenia Roccella said that if Italian law did not permit the sale of a moped without written documentation, it should not permit the right to die without written documentation.