Italy’s ex-premier Silvio Berlusconi will stand in next year’s elections for the European Parliament, the head of the EU assembly said in an interview yesterday.
Berlusconi, 81, was until recently barred from public office due to a tax fraud conviction which he has finished serving.
Courts lifted the ban in May.
“I asked him to run in the European [elections]. I think it’s right that he should head the [party] list,” European Parliament President Antonio Tajani told La Stampa newspaper.
Asked about Berlusconi’s response, Tajani said: “I think he intends to run; I think he was very pleased [by the request].”
Berlusconi ran in European Parliament elections in 1994, 1999, 2004 and 2009, but nearly every time gave up the right to sit in the assembly, ceding his place to a party colleague.
He was a member of the EU legislature only from 1999 to 2001.
Tajani was named deputy leader of Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia on Thursday, and according to La Stampa, was tasked with reviving a party that is slumping in opinion polls.