Pier Luigi Romita (27 July 1924 – 23 March 2003) was an Italian politician who was several times a minister of the Italian Republic.

Biography

Romita was born in

Turin Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The ...

, the son of

Giuseppe Romita Giuseppe Romita (7 January 1887 – 15 March 1958) was an Italian socialist politician. In his life he served several times as a cabinet minister and member of the Parliament. Early life and career The son of Guglielmo Romita and Maria Gianneli, ...

, a long-time member of the

Italian Socialist Party The Italian Socialist Party (, PSI) was a Socialism, socialist and later Social democracy, social-democratic List of political parties in Italy, political party in Italy, whose history stretched for longer than a century, making it one of the l ...

(''Partito Socialista Italiano''; PSI) and Minister of the Interior in 1946. During the Fascist period, he followed his father into confinement on the islands of

Ustica Ustica (; scn, Ùstica) is a small Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is about across and is situated north of Capo Gallo, Sicily. Roughly 1,300 people live in the ''comune'' (municipality) of the same name. There is a regular fer ...

and

Ponza Ponza (Italian: ''isola di Ponza'' ) is the largest island of the Italian Pontine Islands archipelago, located south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in th ...

, and then at

Veroli Veroli ( la, Verulae) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Frosinone, Lazio, central Italy, in the Latin Valley. History Veroli (''Verulae'') became a Roman municipium in 90 BC. It became the seat of a bishopric in 743 AD, and was occupied ...

. In 1933 the family moved to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus (legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

. In 1942, aged 19, he entered the PSI and took part in the Italian resistance movement, as a member of the partisan bands operating in the Colli Albani. In 1947 he graduated in engineering and later taught Hydraulics in the Faculty of Agronomy of the

University of Milan The University of Milan ( it, Università degli Studi di Milano; la, Universitas Studiorum Mediolanensis), known colloquially as UniMi or Statale, is a public research university in Milan, Italy. It is one of the largest universities in Europe ...

. In 1958, after the death of his father, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the

Italian Democratic Socialist Party The Italian Democratic Socialist Party (, PSDI), also known as Italian Social Democratic Party, was a minor social-democratic political party in Italy. The longest serving partner in government for Christian Democracy, the PSDI had been an ...

(''Partito Socialista Democratico Italiano''; PSDI), where he remained until the end of the XI legislature in 1994. Romita's first government positions were as undersecretary for Public Works (1963–1966), Education (1966–1968 and 1970–1972) and the Interior (1968–1969). He was subsequently the Minister of Scientific Research on three occasions, in the Andreotti II (1972–1973), Forlani (1980–1981) and Fanfani V (1982–1983) Cabinets. He was also Minister of Regional Affairs (1983–1984) and for the Budget (1984–1987) respectively in the first and second Craxi governments. Romita was national secretary of the PSDI from 1976 to 1978, succeeding Giuseppe Saragat. In early 1989 he left the party and, together with Pietro Longo, founded the Movement of Unity and Socialist Democracy (''Movimento di Unità e Democrazia Socialista''; UDS), which merged later that same year with the PSI. He was Minister of Community Policies in the Andreotti VII Cabinet. After the disbandment of the PSI in 1994, he entered the newly formed Italian Socialists (SI) and then, from 1997, the

Democratic Party of the Left The Democratic Party of the Left ( it, Partito Democratico della Sinistra, PDS) was a democratic socialist and social-democratic political party in Italy. Founded in February 1991 as the post-communist evolution of the Italian Communist Party, t ...

(PDS). Romita died in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

in 2003.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Romita, Pier Luigi 1924 births 2003 deaths Engineers from Turin Italian Democratic Socialist Party politicians Italian Socialist Party politicians Democratic Party of the Left politicians Italian resistance movement members 20th-century Italian politicians 20th-century Italian engineers