Emma Bonino, farewell to the Radical Europeanist who dreamed of the United States of Europe

With the death of Emma Bonino, Europe has lost one of its most important advocates. The historic Radical leader died on Friday, 11 September, at the age of 78. She had been ill for some time. Born on 9 March 1948 in Bra, in the province of Cuneo, she spanned more than fifty years of Italian and European politics: from the Radical campaigns of the 1970s to the Italian and European parliaments, the European Commission and Italy’s foreign ministry.

Throughout her life and long career, the European Union and the integration of Europe’s states were both a reference point and a goal.

The fight for a federal Europe

The campaign for a federal Europe barely changed across her political life. For Bonino the Union could not stop at an economic construction or at cooperation among national governments. It had to take the leap to a real federation: the United States of Europe.

Her Europeanism came straight from the tradition of Altiero Spinelli. She called herself, without hesitation, a Radical, a Spinellian and a federalist, and she regarded as incomplete a Community architecture built on the primacy of states and the intergovernmental method. As foreign minister in 2013 she put that conviction in a single line: “Federal Europe? Now or never.”

That belief led her again and again to attack what she saw as Europe’s structural weakness: twenty-seven governments forced to compromise on the great strategic questions and unable, especially in foreign policy, to speak with one voice. “The status quo is not adequate, and since we do not want to go backwards, the only alternative is to go forward,” she said in 2013, pointing to the United States of Europe as “the road to take.”

That thread ran through her work to the end. In the 2024 European elections she campaigned for the United States of Europe list, stressing that this was the political goal to pursue and calling for a common foreign and defence policy, a larger federal budget and institutions able to decide without being blocked at every turn by national interests.

Politician and rights activist to the last

She entered militant politics in the 1970s alongside Marco Pannella and became one of the faces of the campaigns for legal abortion, divorce and individual freedom of choice. First elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1976, she thereafter moved between Italian and European parliamentary work. For her the European Parliament soon became a natural arena, not least because it let the Radicals take their human-rights campaigns to a continental scale.

The international dimension grew further when, in 1995, she joined the European Commission, where she served until 1999 with portfolios covering humanitarian aid, fisheries and consumer protection. Those years tied her name above all to humanitarian emergencies and to the defence of people caught in conflict, from the Balkans to Afghanistan.

On the death penalty she was one of the leading figures in the mobilisation that produced the UN General Assembly’s universal moratorium on executions in 2007. In parallel she worked to promote Nessuno tocchi Caino, the association campaigning to abolish capital punishment worldwide.

Back in Italian government, in Romano Prodi’s second cabinet she served from 2006 to 2008 as minister for international trade and European affairs. From 2008 to 2013 she was deputy speaker of the Senate.

In 2013 she became foreign minister in Enrico Letta’s government, a post she held until February 2014. Even as Italy’s top diplomat she went on defending the federalist outlook in public, without softening it in the name of office.

Her career was also marked by a long fight against lung cancer, which she announced in 2015. She faced the illness without leaving the political stage, later returned to parliament and helped found +Europa, the party created to put European integration, liberalism and civil rights back at the centre of Italian politics.

In 2018 she was elected again to the Senate, where she sat on the EU policies committee and the special committee for the protection and promotion of human rights: an institutional summary of the two main lines of her work.

Also important was her relationship of personal respect with Pope Francis, despite deep differences on ethical questions. In 2016 he named her among the “great figures of Italy today,” citing in particular her work on Africa. That same year he received her in private audience for a conversation focused on migration, reception and integration. The relationship later became personal: Francis telephoned her during her illness and, in November 2024, visited her unexpectedly after a hospital stay. After the pontiff’s death in April 2025, Bonino recalled that visit as a moment of “courage and hope,” while stressing that she had never softened her positions on bioethical issues.

Remembrance across the political spectrum

Tributes to Emma Bonino cut across the Italian and European political spectrum. The Senate suspended its sitting for a minute’s silence for its former deputy speaker. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Bonino had been “for decades a strong and recognisable voice in Italian politics,” acknowledging “her weight and her role in the public life of our nation” despite distant political “histories” and “sensibilities.” Deputy prime minister and foreign minister Antonio Tajani, who shared European institutional experience with her, called her “an authoritative representative of Italian politics” and “one of the best-known faces of liberal radicalism,” recalling that, for all their differences, “a strong Europeanist feeling united us,” along with the fight for a death-penalty moratorium and against female genital mutilation.

From Brussels, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said: “Emma Bonino never waited for the world to be ready. She always chose to go forward, showing others the way.” “The Europe she fought for will miss her.” Parliament Vice-President Pina Picierno said “every battle will be harder without Emma’s clarity and courage.” S&D group leader Iratxe García Pérez remembered “a great Europeanist, a democrat and an example of political commitment,” tireless in defence of “equality, women’s rights and freedoms.” Commission Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto spoke of the loss of “a protagonist of our time in Italy and in Europe,” who “will be missed by all.”

Former prime minister Romano Prodi recalled the personal and political relationship built over years: “We worked so much together,” he said, speaking of “absolute loyalty” and a bond marked by both agreement and dissent. “Bonino was clarity,” he summed up, also recalling her “great vitality” during her illness.

Among the parties, Democratic Party secretary Elly Schlein hailed a figure who embodied “rigour, seriousness, competence, determination, courage, passion,” stressing the lesson she left on rights, democracy and Europe as a “common home” to defend. “With her, a piece of our country’s political and civic history departs.” Nicola Zingaretti remembered a woman about whom “you could have different ideas, even distant or opposite ones,” but “whom you could trust, because she was genuine.” From the Five Star Movement, Giuseppe Conte recalled “so many battles for civil and social freedoms and rights,” from the International Criminal Court to abolition of the death penalty and the fight against female genital mutilation. Five Star group leaders Riccardo Ricciardi and Luca Pirondini spoke of a woman “free, courageous and consistent” whose “secular and tireless” voice would be missed in public debate.

Azione leader Carlo Calenda called Bonino “the last great protagonist of the civil battles that modernised this country,” adding that with her “a piece of Italian and European political history is gone.” Condolences also came from the League, which, while recalling “frequent differences of position and view,” recognised “the commitment and political passion” that marked decades of public and institutional life.

It is in the Radical world that her death leaves the deepest gap. “Today we do not lose only our leader; we lose one of the clearest, bravest and freest protagonists in the political history of our country and of the free world,” wrote +Europa secretary Riccardo Magi. In a long tribute he traced her campaigns against clandestine abortion, world hunger, infibulation, genocides and every form of authoritarianism, and above all those “for democracy, the rule of law, international justice, the rights and duties of every person and every family, and the self-determination of women.” And still the campaign for “a united, democratic and federal Europe: the United States of Europe.” “That is her testament,” Magi concluded, promising to turn gratitude “into the courage to keep fighting as she taught us.”

Marco Cappato, treasurer of the Luca Coscioni Association and long a companion in Radical battles, recalled a political passion “inextricable” from a passion for life, a “brutal sincerity” and the tenacity Bonino called tigna. He also recalled the “clashes and misunderstandings” that over time had distanced them, “without touching respect and esteem,” and one of the most important successes they shared on the Radical path: the birth of the International Criminal Court. The best way to remember her, he said, would be to continue “with new struggles for freedom,” defending liberal democracy and, above all, what he called “her” Europe.

Edited by Simone Cantarini

The article in Italian by EUalive’s partner FocusEurope.it can be found here.

Caption: Photo of Emma Bonino as Member of the European Commission, dated 8 October 1997 [Europe by Satellite]