Barbara Spinelli (born 31 May 1946) is an Italian politician. Barbara Spinelli is the daughter of federalist political theorist

Altiero Spinelli Altiero Spinelli (31 August 1907 – 23 May 1986) was an Italian politician, political theorist and European federalist, referred to as one of the founding fathers of the European Union. A communist and militant anti-fascist in his youth, he spe ...

and

Ursula Hirschmann Ursula Hirschmann (2 September 1913 – 8 January 1991) was a German anti-fascist activist and an advocate of European federalism. Life and career Hirschmann was born into a middle-class Jewish family to Carl Hirschmann and Hedwig Marcuse in B ...

, who was a German-Jewish anti-fascist activist. From 2014 to 2019, Spinelli served as a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

, representing

Central Italy Central Italy ( it, Italia centrale or just ) is one of the five official statistical regions of Italy used by the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), a first-level NUTS region, and a European Parliament constituency. Regions Central It ...

. Spinelli was elected to represent

The Other Europe The Other Europe ( it, L'Altra Europa), whose full name was The Other Europe with Tsipras (''L'Altra Europa con Tsipras'', AET), was a left-wing political organisation in Italy. It took part in the 2014 European Parliament election in support of A ...

, but left the alliance in May 2015, after declaring it a "failed project". She is one of the founders of the newspaper ''

La Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnoldo ...

''. Spinelli is a member of the Advisory Panel of

DiEM25 The Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, or DiEM25, is a pan-European political movement founded in 2016 by a group of Europeans, including former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat. The movement was o ...

Parliamentary service

*Vice-chair,

Committee on Constitutional Affairs The Committee on Constitutional Affairs (AFCO) is a committee of the European Parliament dealing with institutional matters such as the Treaties of the European Union and the Parliament's rules of procedure. It is currently chaired by Antonio Taja ...

Personal life

She has three older maternal half-sisters (Silvia, Renata and Eva) from her mother's first marriage to

Eugenio Colorni Eugenio Colorni (22 April 1909 - 30 May 1944) was an Italian philosopher and anti-fascist activist. Life Born in Milan, Colorni taught philosophy at the University of Trieste, and was active in the anti-fascist Giustizia e Libertà movement. He mar ...

and two sisters (Diana and Sara). Her half-sister Eva Colorni, an economist, was married to a fellow Indian economist

Amartya Sen Amartya Kumar Sen (; born 3 November 1933) is an Indian economist and philosopher, who since 1972 has taught and worked in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sen has made contributions to welfare economics, social choice theory, econom ...

from 1973 to her death in 1985. Another half-sister, Renata Colorni, is a translator.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spinelli, Barbara 1946 births Living people Italian people of Jewish descent European United Left–Nordic Green Left MEPs MEPs for Italy 2014–2019 21st-century women MEPs for Italy The Other Europe MEPs Politicians from Rome Italian newspaper editors Italian women editors Women newspaper editors La Repubblica founders