Stefania Proietti and Michele De Pascale were elected presidents of the Umbria and Emilia-Romagna regions, respectively, defeating right-wing opponents Donatella Tesei and Elena Ugolini.

Umbria, Stefania Proietti wins

The mayor of Assisi and president of the province of Perugia, Stefania Proietti, is the new president of the Umbria region: she prevailed over her opponent, Donatella Tesei. A vast camp supported the candidacy of the mayor of Assisi, which was made up of the Pd, Avs, Movimento 5 Stelle, Italia Viva, and Azione. Born in 1975, she obtained a degree in mechanical engineering, a PhD in industrial engineering and a second-level university master’s degree in energy systems management.

She is the author of 70 scientific publications, inventor of patents in the energy and environmental sectors, and a second-level university professor at the Engineering Sciences department of Guglielmo Marconi University. Furthermore, it has participated in events like the United Nations Climate Change Conferences (COP). He approached politics in 2010 when he joined the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. In 2016, the centre-left coalition supported the first candidacy for mayor of Assisi. She was then re-elected in 2021 with the support of the 5 Star Movement and, in the same year, held the position of president of the province of Perugia.

As mayor of Assisi, Proietti took part in the United Nations Conferences on climate change in Marrakech (COP22) and Bonn (COP23), speaking as a speaker on urban sustainability issues. She said as an institutional speaker and member of ICLEI (Local Administrations for Sustainability) at COP22, COP23 and the Global Climate Action Summit (United Nations Global Compact) in 2018 in San Francisco. On that occasion, she managed a panel the Governor of California organised.

She will turn fifty in January. She has married her husband since high school and has two children, ages 16 and 10.

Emilia Romagna wins Michele de Pascale

Michele de Pascale won the regional elections in Emilia-Romagna by a landslide. A clear victory, never in question, that of the candidate supported by Pd, M5s and Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra, who at 39 years old (he will turn 40 on January 20th) can already boast in his CV a double mandate as mayor of Ravenna, in addition to many other roles at the local level (and beyond).

Institute representatives. At university, he enrolled in the faculty of medicine without completing his studies. His passion is politics: in 2004, he ran for the Cervia municipal council and was elected; three years later, he joined the nascent Democratic Party, and in 2009, again in Cervia, he became a councillor. In 2013, he took on the role of provincial secretary of the Democratic Party of Ravenna.

It was in Ravenna that he was elected mayor in 2016 and confirmed as the first citizen five years later. Meanwhile 2018, he also became president of the Union of Italian Provinces. After the flood that hit Emilia-Romagna, he was among the most prominent local administrators in requesting Rome’s intervention for refreshments intended for the areas most affected by the flood, reuniting the ‘shadow’ current of internal territorial administrators to the Democratic Party.

Married to Laura Casadio, daughter of the former president of the Province of Ravenna, he has two children and is a Juventus fan. In his past, there was also a tragic event that he defined as the “watershed” of his life. In January 2011, after accompanying his girlfriend home, he was the victim of a severe accident and remained in a medically induced coma for 10 days.