Guido Crosetto is an Italian businessman and politician, co-founder of Brothers of Italy party. He became internationally famous as an anti-EU austerity and pro-Italexit politician because he strongly opposed the Monti Cabinet since November 2011 when at that time almost all politicians, journalists, economists and public opinion were in favor of EU austerity and strongly against Italexit. Crosetto was President of the Brothers of Italy from 21 December 2012 to 4 April 2013.
Biography
Guido Crosetto comes from a family of entrepreneurs from Cuneo, in Piedmont. Due to his father's death, Crosetto could not finish studies in economy at the University of Turin, which he had been attending: at the University he became a member of the youth wing of the Christian Democracy and in 1988, at only 25 years, Crosetto became economic advisor of Prime MinisterGiovanni Goria. Crosetto from 28 May 1990 to 14 June 2004 was the Mayor of Marene, a small village near Cuneo where he lives, for 3 terms. In the 2001 general election he became a deputy of Forza Italia, the center-right political movement member of EPP and founded by the billionaire and media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. Crosetto was re-elected in 2006 as deputy and in 2008 he joined the new Berlusconi's party The People of Freedom and he was elected again at the Chamber of Deputies. Crosetto served as Undersecretary at the Ministry of Defense in the Berlusconi IV Cabinet and after Berlusconi's resignation in November 2011, Crosetto criticized the formation of the new cabinet led by pro-austerity economist Mario Monti. He founded in December 2012, with Giorgia Meloni and Ignazio La Russa, Brothers of Italy, a national conservative party in opposition to the PdL and to the pro-austerity Monti. Candidate for Senate, Crosetto failed the 2013 election because FdI did not passed the threshold at 3% of the electoral law known as Porcellum. Crosetto run in 2014 for the EU Parliament, but he was not elected because FdI did not passed the threshold at 4% of the electoral law of 2009 for European election in Italy. On the same day of EU election, Crosetto ran in the Regional election of Piedmont as gubernatiorial candidate for FdI that ran alone outside the center-right coalition led by Berlusconi's FI: in this election, Salvini's Lega Nord was allied with FI against FdI, but after the retirement of Crosetto from politics in September 2014 Salvini became more closer to Giorgia Meloni's FdI because without Crosetto the party moved to the right-wing, while FI moved towards the center. Crosetto returned active in politics when the deputy Daniela Santanchè, a right-wing businesswoman and former member of PdL-FI in Lombardy, joined Meloni's FdI in December 2017. Crosetto and Santanchè in FdI represented the small and medium-sized enterprises of Northern Italy in the 2018 general election and they became respectively member of Montecitorio and Senate because the party increased its electoral support surpassing the 4,3% of votes for the first time at national level. Crosetto resigned on 13 March 2019 from Montecitorio and after two days his former seat was assigned to the first candidate on the list of non-elected at the 2018 general election, that is the businesswoman Lucrezia Mantovani. Crosetto in April and May 2019, as non-candidate spokesman of the party, helped Meloni in the campaign for the European Election and FdI increased its electoral support surpassing the 6,4% of votes for the first time at national level.
