Gianni Vernetti

Gianni Vernetti (born 27 November 1960) is a writer and Italian politician.

Early life
Gianni Vernetti was born in Torino, Italy. In 1985 he graduated in architecture at the Polytechnic University of Turin. In 1987 he was awarded a PhD in urban eology from the Polytechnic University of Milan.

Deputy mayor of Torino (1993–1999)
Between 1993 and 1999, Vernetti was deputy mayor of Turin, in charge of public works, environment and sustainable development, and urban renovation.

Member of Parliament, Olive Tree (2001–2006)
In 2001 he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament. As leader of his Group in the Commission on Energy and Industry he promoted several initiatives on Renewable Energies. He was member of the National Steering Committee of his party, The Daisy, a center-left political party member of the European Democratic Party (EDP) and of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Group (ALDE) in the European Parliament.

Senator and UnderSecretary for Foreign Affairs (2006–2008)
In 2006, he was elected to the Senate of the Republic, and after the center-left coalition won the general election he became Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs in the Prodi government. He was in charge of bilateral relations between Italy and the Asia/Pacific countries and on Democracy and Human Rights issues. Vernetti coordinated all the Italian initiatives in Afghanistan, where Italy takes part in the NATO military mission and is coordinating the Justice Sector and Rule of Law Reform.

He promoted the new Italian policies towards Central Asia implementing several development aid projects, and improving economic, commercial and military cooperation. He coordinated the Italian initiatives in Asia promoting several projects of economic, scientific, commercial and military cooperation, particularly between Italy and India, China, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Pakistan.

Vernetti coordinated the Italian campaign for the Universal Moratorium on the Death Penalty, coordinating the action to seek consensus at the United Nations that led to the approval of the resolution in December 2007. He represented as well Italy in the UN Human Rights Council between 2006 and 2008. Vernetti coordinated the Italian initiatives in the Pacific area and promoted the entrance of Italy into the Pacific Islands Forum.

Member of Parliament, Democratic Party (2008–2013)
In 2008 Vernetti was elected for a third term in the Chamber of Deputies and he was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Italian Delegation to the NATO Parliamentarian Assembly. He was member of the Steering Committee of the European Democratic Party.

He is coordinator of the Alliance of Democrats an international network of more than 70 democratic, liberal and centrist political parties from all the five continents.

He is co-president of the Italian Group of the Liberal International.

He became president of the Italy–Tibet Parliamentary Association in 2008, and vice-president of the Italy–Israel Parliamentary Association.

Writer and Journalist (2013–...)
In 2013, after three terms in Parliament, he decided to not run again and founded Gea Solar, a company focused on utility-scale Solar PV development in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Since 2017 he has promoted the blog (giannivernetti.it), with information on current geopolitical affairs and international politics.

Since January 2018 he has been columnist on foreign affairs at the Italian daily newspaper La Stampa and in May 2020 became columnist at Huffington Post, writing several op-ed and reportage on foreign politics, security and human rights.

Starting from May 2020 he became a columnist at La Repubblica writing editorials, reports and interviews on the most relevant global crises, the growing confrontation between democracies and authoritarian regimes, the new threats to international security, the challenges posed by the regimes of Russia, China and Iran.

In March 2022 he published the book "Dissidenti" for Rizzoli in which he analyzes the growing confrontation between democracies and autocracies, accompanying the reader on a journey through the mountains of Kurdistan, where the Kurdish fighters defeated the jihadist militias of ISIS; on the slopes of the Himalayas, where a handful of courageous monks saved the thousand-year-old Tibetan culture; in the small and combative Lithuania, which experienced all the totalitarianisms of the 20th century and today welcomes dissidents from Russia and Belarus; on the island of Taiwan, which resists Chinese authoritarianism.

Books

 * Dissidenti. Da Aleksei Navalny a Nadia Murad, da Azar Nafisi al Dalai Lama: incontri con donne e uomini che lottano contro i regimi. Rizzoli, Milano, 2022. ISBN 978-88-1-716162-6

Personal life
He is married to Laura De Donato, a journalist. They have four children.