Elisabetta Gardini

Gardini was once close to the Christian Democracy (DC) and, after that party was dissolved into the Italian People's Party (PPI), she was an unsuccessful candidate for Segni Pact in the 1994 general election.[5] In 2004 Gardini was appointed spokesperson of Forza Italia (FI), with which she was elected to the Regional Council of Veneto in 2005 and to the Chamber of Deputies in 2006, but in 2008 she was the first of the non elected candidate in 2008 general election (Gardini entered in the Chamber of Deputies in July 2010, but resigned because she was MEP at that time) and on 30 May 2008 she entered (because she was the first of the non elected candidate in the North-East Italy for FI in the 2004 election) in the European Parliament - replacing Renato Brunetta - and after the 2009 election Gardini was elected for a full five-year term with The People of Freedom (PDL). Gardini was once again re-elected in the 2014 election and was subsequently appointed leader of the new Forza Italia (the former PDL after the change of the party's name) in the European Parliament, but in April 2019 Gardini left Silvio Berlusconi's FI to go with Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) because "Antonio Tajani (the Vicepresident of Berlusconi's FI) transformed Forza Italia (FI) in the "clone" of the Democratic Party (PD) and this is not acceptable for me"[6] and for this reason Gardini left Tajani's European People's Party group (the group of FI) to join with Raffaele Fitto's Conservative group (ECR).[7] In the 2019 election Gardini run, as a candidate in the North-East Italy, with the list, associated with ECR, of Brothers of Italy,[8] the list led by Meloni where Fitto run for the Southern Italy constituency. Gardini in May 2019 was not re-elected[9] in the European Election (she became the first of the non elected candidate for FdI in the North-East Italy) and her former seat passed to Sergio Berlato.