Brussels – Seventy-eight years old, and a life spent in Europe and for Europe. Emma Bonino has always linked her name and her political career to the European project. Through and through, and at every possible level – not just that of institutional buildings and meeting rooms. As in 2012, when, as Deputy President of the Italian Senate, she took part in the launch of an Italian publication founded in Brussels that aimed to inform readers about the work of the EU: Eunews, our newspaper. Since then, Emma Bonino has regularly taken part in events organised by Eunews, particularly those focusing on the Union’s role in the global context and in the everyday lives of its citizens. This is a sign of her commitment to those who engage with and seek to raise awareness of the European Union amongst the very lifeblood of the European Union: European citizens, including Italians.
Emma Bonino has thus become deeply associated with the project of European integration and its development. She joined the European Parliament in 1979, the year of the first European elections. To provide some context, the President of the Parliament was the Frenchwoman Simone Veil, the first woman to hold that office, an Auschwitz survivor, a French politician and Minister for Health who would lead France to legalise abortion. This was a turning point in the history of the European Union, still known as the European Economic Community, but already looking towards a profound political transformation. Bonino belonged to the first generation of directly elected MEPs and served in this role for two consecutive terms, until 1988. She returned to the European Parliament more than ten years later, in 1999, for another “12-star” parliamentary term. Between her two stints as a Member of the European Parliament, she served a term as European Commissioner for Consumer Protection. She was the Italian member of the Commission led by the Luxembourger Jacques Louis Santer, which went down in history as the only College of Commissioners to date to have resigned en masse before the end of its term, and during which she single-handedly devised the Commission’s role in consumer protection. Bonino once again finds herself at the centre of the history of European integration, both for the record and in terms of the agenda: it was under the Santer Commission, of which she was a member, that the Treaty of Amsterdam was signed, transferring competence in the field of Justice and Home Affairs from the Member States to the EU and strengthening the role of the European Parliament. But her name is also linked to a cornerstone of unity: the euro. Bonino contributed to the preparatory work for the introduction of the single currency, and it was under the Santer Commission that the monetary transition from the many national currencies to the euro took place, a tangible symbol of integration.
