Tuesday, January 11, 2022
Shortly before the end of his term in office
EU Parliament President Sassoli is dead
David Sassoli made a name for himself in his native Italy as a newspaper reporter and news presenter. In 2019 the progressive Catholic will become President of the European Parliament. Sassoli died in a clinic shortly before the end of his term in office.
The President of the EU Parliament, David Sassoli, is dead. His spokesman Roberto Cuillo announced that he died early this morning at the age of 65 in the municipality of Aviano in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Just yesterday a spokesman for the EU Parliament announced in Brussels that Sassoli was in a hospital in his home country, Italy. The stay had become “because of a serious complication due to a dysfunction of the immune system”.
The President of Parliament has been reported to have been in treatment since December 26th. The hospital stay had not previously been announced. In October, Sassoli already missed a session of parliament because he had a fever. He was previously hospitalized for pneumonia.
Best Reporter Award
Sassoli belonged to the social democratic party Partito Democratico (PD). In his home country Italy never appeared as a political heavyweight. Rather, he gained notoriety as the presenter of the main news program “TG1”. “I’m not a star, I’m very boring,” he is said to have once said of himself.
At the beginning of his career he worked for smaller daily newspapers and news agencies. In 1985 he started working for the Roman newspaper “Il Giorno”. From 1982 he worked with the television station RAI, where he dealt with topics such as organized crime and immigration after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Between 1996 and 1997 he directed the program “La cronaca in diretta” for the television station Rai 2, which earned him an award as best reporter.
In the 2009 EU elections, when he entered parliament for the first time, he received more than 400,000 votes, which is an impressive result for a newcomer to politics. During his first term in office in Brussels and Strasbourg, he headed the Italian social democratic delegation. In 2013 he ran unsuccessfully as mayor of the Italian capital Rome. From 2014 to 2019 he was one of the 14 Vice Presidents of the EU Parliament. In the summer of 2019, the MPs elected him President of the Papal Parliament. His term of office would have expired next week.
Sassoli was known as a progressive Catholic. According to his official biography, he has been part of Catholic movements since his youth, including the Italian scouts and a fan of Fiorentina, the main football club in his hometown. The 65-year-old leaves behind his wife and two children.