In Memoriam – Luigi Spaventa

Luigi Spaventa, economist and former Research Council member, died on 6 January aged 78 after a long illness.

Spaventa was Professor Emeritus at the Sapienza University of Rome, where he studied in the 1950s, and member of the EUI’s Research Council from 1981 to 1988.

Born in Rome on 5 March 1934, Spaventa left the Italian capital in 1957 to study at the University of Cambridge. He went on to be a visiting fellow at the University of Oxford’s All Souls College.

The professor also led an active political life, from 1976 to 1983 serving as an independent deputy with the Communist Party. Spaventa was budget minister from 1993 to 1994, before unsuccessfully running against Berlusconi in the 1994 election.

In 1998 he became the chairman of Consob, the National Commission for Companies and Stock Exchange. Spaventa was also a columnist for Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera.