Silvio Berlusconi

Silvio Berlusconi (1936–2023) was an Italian businessman, media proprietor, and politician who dominated Italian political life for nearly three decades. He built the Fininvest holding company and the Mediaset commercial television empire before entering politics in 1993, founding Forza Italia in 1994 in the wake of the Tangentopoli corruption scandals that collapsed Italy's so-called First Republic.

Berlusconi served as Prime Minister of Italy four times: briefly in 1994, then from 2001 to 2006, and from 2008 to 2011. His governing coalitions typically included the post-fascist Alleanza Nazionale (later merged into Il Popolo della Libertà) and the regionalist Lega Nord. His tenures were marked by tax-cutting, labour-market liberalisation, and a foreign policy that aligned closely with the United States under George W. Bush, including Italian participation in the Iraq mission, while also cultivating warm personal ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi — the 2008 Treaty of Friendship with Libya was a notable bilateral instrument.

His career was inseparable from controversy: persistent allegations of conflict of interest between his political office and his media holdings, multiple criminal trials, and the bunga bunga sex-party scandals. In 2013 he was convicted of tax fraud in connection with Mediaset and barred from public office under the Severino law; the ban was later lifted, allowing him to win a European Parliament seat in 2019 and return to the Italian Senate in 2022.

He resigned the premiership in November 2011 amid the eurozone sovereign-debt crisis, when spreads on Italian bonds surged and Giorgio Napolitano appointed the technocrat Mario Monti. Berlusconi remained leader of Forza Italia until his death in June 2023, and the party joined Giorgia Meloni's coalition government formed in October 2022. He is widely credited — and criticised — for pioneering a media-driven, personalist style of politics later echoed by populist leaders elsewhere.