Roberta Metsola in Rome to celebrate Alcide De Gasperi

Brussels – The president of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, will be in Italy on Oct. 25 to celebrate the anniversary of Alcide De Gasperi’s passing. In honour of the noble father of Christian Democracy, the foundation that bears his name is organizing a series of events to be attended by Italian and foreign institutional guests.

The 2024 was decreed “De Gasperi year” by the De Gasperi Foundation, established in 1982 to gather the legacy of the Italian statesman. On the 70th anniversary of his death, a commemorative event has been organized at the Chamber of Deputies in Rome to be attended by, among others, the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella and the President of the EU Parliament Roberta Metsola. The Maltese woman comes from the European People’s Party (EPP) ranks, of which the Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democracy Party) was also a member until its electoral fortunes turned upside down in the 1990s.

De Gasperi, among the best-known personalities of the First Republic and widely known beyond national borders, was the last president of the Council of Ministers under the Savoy monarchy and the first of the new republican phase inaugurated with the 1946 referendum. Immediately after, for a brief period, he provisionally held the position of head of state (a position that later went to Enrico De Nicola).

He was among the founders of the DC in 1943 and one of the most hardy supporters of European integration from its earliest days, leading Italy to join it as a founding country in 1952 with the Treaty of Rome. He is therefore regarded, along with Altiero Spinelli, Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Paul-Henri Spaak and Johan Willem Beyen, as one of the founding fathers of what is now the European Union.