A name, that of Emma Bonino, which at the mere mention recalls the word “rights”. But if you look at her story through the lens of political news – the kind that doesn’t stop at flyers but digs into the dynamics of palaces and squares – the figure of the radical leader takes on the contours of a permanent exception in the Italian landscape.
A life always lived “against”, yet almost always within the institutions. Born in Bra, in the province of Cuneo, in March 1948, Bonino graduated in Languages at Bocconi in ’72. But it is the Milan of the early Seventies, that of civil ferment and heated squares, that marks her destiny. In 1975 she founded the Cisa and put into practice what would become the “radical method” par excellence: self-denunciation. She ended up in prison for supporting the practice of illegal abortions when pregnancy termination was still a crime under the fascist penal code. It was the point of no return. The meeting with Marco Pannella sealed a partnership that would change the history of rights and customs in Italy. In 1976, at only 28 years old, she crossed the threshold of the Chamber of Deputies. From that moment, her political trajectory became a perfect pendulum between civil battles, sometimes ‘niche’, and international stages.
Those who knew her in the corridors of Montecitorio remember her rough pragmatism, far from the soft liturgies of the First Republic. A determination that led her in 1995 to Brussels as European Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Fisheries in the Santer Commission. It was there, among the refugee camps of the Balkans and the crises in Africa of the Great Lakes, that Bonino earned the rank of “global leader”, fighting on the front lines for the establishment of the International Criminal Court and against female genital mutilation.
Emma Bonino has died, radicals and +Europa in mourning: “She has left us but will never leave us”
Emma Bonino passed away in Rome at the age of 78. In recent days she had been hospitalized in intensive care…
The return to domestic politics sees her as a protagonist in center-left governments. She was Minister of International Trade in the Prodi II government, vice president of the Senate, and finally Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Letta government between 2013 and 2014. This last appointment came by popular demand from a public opinion that recognized her international stature. In recent years, the most difficult challenge shifted to the personal level. In 2015, the announcement of the illness – a pulmonary microcytoma – faced without hiding, claiming the right to fragility but without yielding an inch on the ground of commitment. It is in this scenario that the adventure of +Europa was born, her last political creation conceived in 2017 to stem the sovereignist wave and put Europeanism back at the center of the national debate.
An adventure lived with the passion that remains the very hallmark of Emma, as comrades are used to calling her. Until her resignation from the presidency at the beginning of 2025. After her passing, the name Emma Bonino remains the symbol of a secular, transnational Italy stubbornly clinging to civil rights. A figure who, even in moments of greatest political isolation, has shown how ideas, if supported by personal courage, can break down the resistance of the Palace.
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