Carlo Nordio

Carlo Nordio was born in Treviso, in the Veneto region, in 1947. He is a member of the Nordio family. He became a magistrate in 1977, and was later appointed deputy prosecutor of Venice. In the 1980s, he led investigations on the Venetian Red Brigades. In the early 1990s, Nordio was among the protagonists of the famous Mani Pulite investigation.^[3]

During his later career, he was a consultant to the Parliamentary Commission for Terrorism and chairman of the Ministerial Commission for the reform of the penal code. Nordio served as deputy prosecutor of Venice until his retirement in 2017, dealing with economic crimes, corruption and medical liability. After his retirement, he collaborated with numerous legal journals and newspapers including Il Tempo, Il Messaggero, and Il Gazzettino. Since 5 December 2018, he has been a member of the board of directors of the Luigi Einaudi Onlus Foundation.^[4]

On 24 January 2022, Brothers of Italy's leader Giorgia Meloni proposed Nordio as her candidate in the 2022 Italian presidential election.^[5] Nordio rejected the candidacy, citing lack of political experience.^[6] However, he was confirmed as a possible candidate of the centre-right coalition on the following day.^[7] On 29 January, Brothers of Italy voted him when all the other main parties proposed a re-election of incumbent president Sergio Mattarella.^[8][9][10]

On the occasion of the 2022 referendum on justice, he promoted the reasons for the yes, joining, as one of its major exponents, the Committee for the yes.^[11]

In the early political elections of 25 September 2022 he was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in the single-member constituency of Treviso for the center-right and as the leader of the Brothers of Italy in the multi-member Veneto. Nordio was elected in the uninominal with 56.2%.^[12]

On 22 October 2022, Nordio was appointed Minister of Justice in the government led by Giorgia Meloni, who became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Italy.

The constitutional law reform that concerned the failed 2026 Italian constitutional referendum was named after Nordio after he proposed it as Minister of Justice.

Nordio considers himself a conservative liberal, a pro-Europeanist and an Atlanticist, while having an admiration for Winston Churchill.^[13] In 1967 he joined the Italian Liberal Party, but he had to leave the party upon becoming a magistrate.^[14][15] After retiring, he joined the new Italian Liberal Party, of which he was a member of the committee of the guarantors until 2022.^[16]

He was one of the promoters of the constitutional reform project for the introduction in Italy of the separation of the professional careers of criminal judges and prosecutors. He stated that he agreed with the project of Freemason Licio Gelli and the Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due, even though he had never known the so called "Plan of Democratic Rebirth".^[17]