In view of Italy’s renewed and increasingly intense and dynamic attention for the southern shores of the Mediterranean, one year on from the Arab spring, which it considers a strategic foreign policy priority, Minister for Foreign Affairs Giulio Terzi has decided to appoint a Special Envoy for the Countries of the Mediterranean and the Arab Spring.
The appointment has gone to Minister Plenipotentiary Maurizio Massari, after three years as the Ministry’s spokesperson, in light of his extensive and variegated curriculum and vast international experience.
A Fellow at Harvard’s Weatherhead Centre ofInternational Affairs, with a Masters in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, and the author of numerous publications on international themes (including “Russia, democrazia europea o potenza globale”, 2009), over the course of his career Maurizio Massari has held prestigious posts in Moscow, London and Washington, was appointed Head of the OSCE Mission in Belgrade with the title and rank of Ambassador, and later made Head of the Analysis and Planning Unit of the Foreign Ministry in Rome, a position he held until January 2006, when he was named Head of the Press Service and Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The mandate Minister Terzi has given Maurizio Massari is a threefold one: to promote relations with the new political formations and civil societies of the Arab Spring countries; to contribute to the formulation of a national strategy for the Mediterranean; and to explore proposals and initiatives concerning the consolidation of the regional framework of the greater Mediterranean region.
In announcing his decision, Minister Terzi underscored that his choice had taken into consideration Massari’s extremely high professional profile, the appreciation he enjoys at international level and his expertise in matters of priority importance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Massari already has a full agenda of visits and meetings planned with partners in the region, and will work in direct collaboration with Minister Terzi on national and European strategies to give further impetus and content to this crucial dimension of Italian foreign policy. Minister Terzi expressed his deep appreciation to Maurizio Massari and gratitude “for his exceptional work over the years, which have earned him my personal esteem, that of my predecessor and the entire ministry, and which will soon land him in a prestigious post”.
New Head of the Foreign Ministry Press Service and Spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Giuseppe Manzo, is 44 years old and a career diplomat. For the past two years he has run the press office at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, where he also served from 1998 to 2002 following the transition from the Clinton Administration to that of George W. Bush. From 2005 to 2009 he was Press Office Chief and Spokesperson for the Italian Mission to the United Nations in New York and a member of the Italian delegation to the United Nations Security Council in 2007-2008, the period of the negotiations and final approval of the Italian-spearheaded resolution on a death penalty moratorium.
An expert on the American press, Giuseppe Manzo has written articles on the media’s role in the war on terrorism and on communication with the UN. He taught in the Masters in International Communication Programme at the IULM University of Milan. Among his previous posts abroad, he was Trade Secretary in Tirana from 1995 to 1998, during the crisis that led to the collapse of the financial pyramid schemes. At the Foreign Ministry headquarters in Rome he has held positions with the Italian Development Cooperation, the Directorate General for Economic Affairs and the Secretariat General.
