Giancarlo Giorgetti


Giancarlo Giorgetti is an Italian politician and prominent member of Lega Nord, of which he became deputy secretary in 2013. He was Secretary of the Council of Ministers in the Conte I Cabinet.

Political career

In the early 1990s, he joined Lega Lombarda and Lega Nord. Elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the first time in 1996 Italian general election, he was re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2008, 2013 and 2018. From 2001 to 2006, he was the chairman of the Budget Committee in the Chamber. Within the party, he was national secretary of Lega Lombarda from 2002 to 2012 and has been deputy federal secretary of Lega Nord since 2016.
Giorgetti was described by The New York Times as a powerful aide to Umberto Bossi, founder and federal secretary of Lega Nord from 1991 to 2012; and by The Economist as his "dauphin". In 2010, The Guardian described him as an "influential member of Berlusconi's Lega Nord party", where Berlusconi stood erroneously for Bossi. Under Matteo Salvini, Bossi's opponent and new federal secretary of Lega Nord since 2013, Giorgetti continued to be one of the most influential members of the party.

Political views and controversies

Giorgetti is a federalist and regionalist politician who supports decentralization. Speaking at the 2018 edition of the Communion and Liberation Rimini Meeting on 20 August 2018, he addressed the rise of populism, stating that "the Italian Parliament doesn't matter anymore because it's no longer understood by citizens, who see it as a place of political inconclusiveness".
Giorgetti is a vocal supporter of a first-past-the-post based electoral system and pushes for a return to the Italian electoral law of 1993, although it was repealed in favor of the Italian electoral law of 2005 with Lega Nord's support. In 2020 Giorgetti argued that Italy needs an electoral system that "makes possible to govern. Of all the electoral systems I've known, the one that worked best is Mattarellum", claiming that "local mayors, entrepreneurs, professionals and people representing their own territory were brought into nationwide politics thanks to FPTP's single-member districts mechanism".
In 2006 Giorgetti found himself at the center of a controversy for having refused, in 2004, a 50–100,000 euro bribe from Italian banker Gianpiero Fiorani.