Pier Ferdinando Casini

Infobox Prime Minister
honorific-prefix = Onorevole
name = Pier Ferdinando Casini

order = President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies
term_start = May 31, 2001
term_end = April 29, 2006
predecessor = Luciano Violante
successor = Fausto Bertinotti

order2 = Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies
constituency2 = Lombardia I
term_start2 = April 21, 2006
term_end2 =

birth_date = Birth date and age|1955|12|3|mf=y
birth_place = Bologna, Italy
nationality = Italian
alma_mater =
profession =
children =
spouse =
residence =
party = UDC

Pier Ferdinando "Pierferdinando" Casini (born 3 December 1955) is an Italian politician.

President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from 2001 to 2006, Casini is currently President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), Co-President of the Christian Democratic International (with Vicente Fox), and majority faction leader of the Union of Christian and Centre Democrats (UDC).

Career

Casini was born in Bologna.

Graduated with a degree in Law, he was first elected in 1983 for the Christian Democracy party. In 1993, he was amongst the founders of the Christian Democratic Centre (CCD), which merged into UDC in 2002. In 2001, after Berlusconi's victory in the general election, Casini was chosen by the newly-formed parliament as President of the Chamber of Deputies (the Italian lower house of parliament).

Today he is widely regarded as one of the primary members of the House of Freedoms, and sometimes spoken of as a possible successor to Berlusconi himself as leader of the coalition. However, as the campaign for the Italian elections (to be held on April 13, 2008) began, Casini officially detached himself from Berlusconi's 'People of Freedom' (new name of what was the House of Freedoms coalition), preferring to run alone. In a speech to his UDC party, Casini said that "not everyone is for sale", in a not so veiled statement about Berlusconi's political tactics. Casini is running on a purely 'centrist' platform and is negotiating with other centre parties such as the UDEUR of Clemente Mastella and the Rosa Bianca of Savino Pezzotta.

Familiar notes

After his divorce from Roberta Lubich (mother of his two daughters, Maria Carolina and Benedetta), he started dating and eventually moved in with Azzurra Caltagirone, daughter of the famous Roman entrepreneur and publisher Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone. Later they would have a daughter and married on 27 october, 2007.