55 Facts About Giuseppe Conte

1.

Giuseppe Conte is an Italian jurist, academic, and politician who served as prime minister of Italy from June 2018 to February 2021.

2.

Giuseppe Conte has been the president of the Five Star Movement since August 2021.

3.

Giuseppe Conte's government was the first in the Western world to implement a national lockdown to stop the spread of the disease.

4.

Giuseppe Conte was the fifth Prime Minister appointed without prior political experience, after Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Silvio Berlusconi, Lamberto Dini, and Mario Monti, as well as the first from Southern Italy since Ciriaco De Mita in 1989.

5.

Giuseppe Conte was the longest-serving independent prime minister in the history of Italy, even though he was widely seen as close to the M5S.

6.

Giuseppe Conte has often been called "the people's lawyer", as he described himself during his first speech as Prime Minister.

7.

Giuseppe Conte was born on 8 August 1964 into a middle-class family at Volturara Appula, near Foggia.

8.

Giuseppe Conte's father Nicola was a public employee in the local municipality, while his mother Lillina Roberti was an elementary school teacher.

9.

Giuseppe Conte later researched or lectured at Sorbonne University in 2000, Girton College, Cambridge in 2001 and New York University in 2008.

10.

Giuseppe Conte began his academic career during the 1990s when he taught at Roma Tre University, at LUMSA University in Rome, at the University of Malta, and at the University of Sassari in Sardinia.

11.

Giuseppe Conte is currently professor of private law at the University of Florence and at Rome's LUISS.

12.

Giuseppe Conte sits on the board of trustees of John Cabot University in Rome.

13.

In 2010 and 2011, Giuseppe Conte served on the board of directors of the Italian Space Agency and in 2012 he was appointed by the Bank of Italy as a member of the "Banking and Financial Arbitrage" commission.

14.

Giuseppe Conte served in scientific committee of the Italian Foundation of Notaries.

15.

On 21 May, Giuseppe Conte was proposed by Di Maio and Salvini for the role of Prime Minister in the 2018 Italian government, despite reports in the Italian press suggesting that President Mattarella still had significant reservations about the direction of the new government.

16.

On 1 June 2018, Giuseppe Conte officially succeeded the Democrat Paolo Gentiloni as the head of the Italian government and was sworn in as the new prime minister.

17.

The coalition of the two populist parties which Giuseppe Conte led was known as the Government of Change, because of a document that summarized the electoral programmes of the two parties, which was called "Contract for the Government of Change".

18.

Giuseppe Conte advocated a fight against political corruption, the introduction of a law which regulates the conflict of interests, a new bill which expands the right of self-defense, a reduction in taxes and a drastic cut in money going to elected politicians and government bureaucrats.

19.

Besides M5S and League, Giuseppe Conte received two votes from independent deputies and one vote from Vittorio Sgarbi, a notable and controversial member of Forza Italia who has always heavily criticised M5S, but decided to support the cabinet in support of Salvini, and with the hope that a M5S government could lead to the party's failure.

20.

On 5 February 2019, Giuseppe Conte became acting Minister of European Affairs after the resignation of Paolo Savona, who was elected President of the Companies and Exchange Commission.

21.

Renzi called for radical changes to the government's economic recovery plans after the COVID-19 pandemic, and demanded that Giuseppe Conte cede his mandate over the secret services coordination task.

22.

Giuseppe Conte was backed by many members of his cabinet, like Dario Franceschini, Luigi Di Maio, Roberto Speranza, Stefano Patuanelli, Alfonso Bonafede, Vincenzo Spadafora and Riccardo Fraccaro.

23.

In September 2019, at the head of his second government, Giuseppe Conte launched a "Green New Deal", named after the analogous US proposed legislation that aimed to address climate change and economic inequality.

24.

In February 2020, Giuseppe Conte appointed Mariana Mazzucato as his economic counselor.

25.

Giuseppe Conte found key allies in France, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Slovenia and Luxembourg, which demanded more be done to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic; while Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Estonia strongly opposed the eurobonds.

26.

From 13 to 21 June 2020, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte organized a conference called Progettiamo il Rilancio, better known as "estates general", in Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome, with the aim of "forging a coherent and well-funded plan for Italy's economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis".

27.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte described the deal as an "historic day for Italy and Europe".

28.

When Giuseppe Conte became Prime Minister in 2018, he acted quickly to deliver on promises to the government's anti-immigration base through strict controls on immigration to Italy.

29.

The day after the collapse, Giuseppe Conte declared a state of emergency for the Liguria region, which would last for a year.

30.

On 8 March 2020, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte extended the quarantine to all of Lombardy and 14 other northern provinces, putting more than a quarter of the national population under lockdown.

31.

Giuseppe Conte later proceeded to officially sign the executive decree.

32.

On 4 November 2020, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte announced a new lockdown, dividing the country into three zones depending on the severity of the pandemic, corresponding to red, orange and yellow zones.

33.

Giuseppe Conte described the situation as "particularly critical", asserting that the virus was moving at a "strong and even violent" pace.

34.

Giuseppe Conte considered Russia a strategic partner in the fight against Islamic terrorism.

35.

However, Giuseppe Conte stressed that under his leadership Italy will remain an active member of NATO and a close ally of the United States.

36.

In June 2018, Trump praised Giuseppe Conte, describing him as a "really great leader" and "very strong on immigration".

37.

In 2019, Giuseppe Conte authorized the US Attorney General, William Barr, to discuss with the Italian intelligence services about a possible plot against President Trump amid the investigations on the Russian interferences in the 2016 presidential election.

38.

Giuseppe Conte stated that the meeting with Barr was "legal and fair", adding that he had never talked about this matter with President Trump.

39.

Giuseppe Conte was the last leader of a G7 member to congratulate Biden for his victory; moreover, he was the last leader among the European G7 members to be phone called by the new President-elect.

40.

Giuseppe Conte stated that the offensive "puts the region's civilians and stability in jeopardy".

41.

On 9 May 2020, Giuseppe Conte announced her liberation in a tweet.

42.

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte asked for the immediately release, but the Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar denied it, demanding a prisoner exchange.

43.

On 17 December 2020, Giuseppe Conte announced that the eighteen fishermen were freed.

44.

On 28 February 2021, after a few days from the end of his premiership, Giuseppe Conte joined the Five Star Movement.

45.

In June 2022, Giuseppe Conte became particularly critical of the government's approach to the war in Ukraine and the deployment of military aids to Kyiv's government, on the other hand, Di Maio strongly defended it.

46.

On 13 July 2022, Giuseppe Conte announced that the M5S would revoke its support to the national unity government of Mario Draghi regarding the so-called decreto aiuti, a decree on economic stimulus to contrast the ongoing energy crisis, opening a political crisis within the majority.

47.

Giuseppe Conte was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the multi-member constituency of Lombardy 1.

48.

Giuseppe Conte has been described by journalists and political analysts as a populist politician.

49.

Giuseppe Conte added that "the ideological schemes of the 20th century are no longer adequate to represent the current political system" and it should be "more important and correct to evaluate the work of a political force on how it is positioned on the respect of fundamental rights and freedoms".

50.

Giuseppe Conte opposed the "hypertrophy of Italian laws", advocating the repeal of useless laws and supported a simplification of bureaucracy.

51.

Giuseppe Conte married Valentina Fico, a lawyer from Rome and daughter of a former director of the Santa Cecilia conservatory, with whom he has a child, Niccolo, born in 2007; however, they divorced after a few years.

52.

Giuseppe Conte is a Roman Catholic and a follower of Padre Pio of Pietrelcina.

53.

On 21 May 2018, when Giuseppe Conte was proposed to President Mattarella as candidate for prime minister, The New York Times questioned his summer stays at New York University listed in his official curriculum vitae in an article asserting that a NYU spokeswoman could not find Giuseppe Conte in university "records as either a student or faculty member".

54.

Similarly, the Duquesne University of Pittsburgh and the University of Malta found no record of him in their archives, although it was confirmed that Giuseppe Conte held lectures at the old university building in Valletta, Malta, for the Foundation for International Studies.

55.

In June 2020, then Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte approved the sale of two military ships to Egypt.