“I have received an almost impossible legacy,” Tajani, 69, said in a speech to his party colleagues. “It is not easy to lead a political movement that has been led by Silvio Berlusconi for almost 30 years”. He said he was “different” from the other parties in the coalition that supports the Italian government and wanted to maintain that identity. “We want to be the centre-right of the centre-right”.
Tajani is not as popular in Italy as his electoral competitors. He spent an important part of his career in Brussels, where he was European Commissioner and President of the European Parliament. He has been a member of Forza Italia since its founding in 1994, and was the party’s second man at the time of Berlusconi’s death. The coalition in Italy is made up of four parties, of which Forza Italia is the smallest.