Sannino appointed Italian ambassador to EU

Commission official will leave department for enlargement to help prepare Italy’s presidency of the Council of Ministers.

Stefano Sannino, the European Commission’s director-general for enlargement, has been appointed Italy’s permanent representative to the European Union.

Sannino, who has been in his current post since July 2011, will take up his new appointment on 1 July, one year before Italy takes over the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers for the second half of 2014.

Sannino replaces Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, 66, who has been in the post since June 2008.

Sannino is a career diplomat who held various posts from 1986-98 at the foreign ministry in Rome, the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Italian embassy in Belgrade and its permanent representation to the EU.

In 1998-2001, he served as head of the private office of two trade ministers: first was Piero Fassino, in the government of prime minister Romano Prodi, and then, from 2000, he worked for Enrico Letta, Italy’s current prime minister.

Sannino was briefly posted as head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Belgrade immediately after the fall of the Milošević regime before serving, in 2002-04, as Prodi’s diplomatic adviser when Prodi was president of the European Commission.

In 2004-06 Sannino was the Commission’s director for crisis management and representative to the Political and Security Committee, the EU’s main foreign-policy decision-making body.

In 2006-08, he was diplomatic adviser to Prodi when Prodi was again prime minister.

In 2008-10, Sannino held senior positions in the Commission’s external-relations department before becoming deputy director-general for enlargement.

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