Fao, Italia nominates Martina as Director-General

Maurizio Martina is Italy's candidate for the post of director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The government announced it on the day of the Agrifish Council, with the words of Vice-Premier Antonio Tajani and Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida.

The proposals will be different. The Italian ministers made this clear: 'Today we will present his candidature, but there will probably be other European candidatures. We will ask for a unified position of Europe compared to other equally authoritative positions of other world leaders, but we believe that Maurizio Martina has represented Italia well,' Lollobrigida said.

The government led by Giorgia Meloni, added the Minister of Agriculture, 'has supported the candidature of Maurizio Martina: although he has a different political history from ours, we felt that Italia deserved to have that role and may even more deserve to have a leading role in an international organisation of the highest level, which has its headquarters in Rome, in which he will be able to best represent the general interest of an organisation that has to deal with issues related to food security, with particular reference to agriculture, of course'.

Martina, who is now deputy director-general of the FAO, is linked to the Democratic Party. He was Minister of Agriculture with the Dems (heading the Renzi and, later, the Gentiloni government) and also party secretary (between March and November 2018). In 2018 he was elected to the House: a role he left three years later for the position at Fao.

Martina is now deputy to Qu Dongyu, first elected in 2019 and re-elected in the summer of 2023 for a second four-year term. A biologist, he was Vice-Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in China in 2015.