Italian political party
Energies for Italy (Italian: Energie per l'Italia, EpI) was a political party in Italy, launched in November 2016[2][3][4] and officially established on 1 April 2017.[5] Its leader is Stefano Parisi, a former director-general of Confindustria and CEO of Fastweb, who was an unsuccessful candidate for mayor in the 2016 Milan municipal election.
History
In the run-up of the 2016 Milan municipal election, Stefano Parisi was selected by Silvio Berlusconi as the candidate for mayor for Forza Italia (FI). In the election, Parisi pulled the party to 20.2%, but however narrowly lost to his Democratic opponent, Giuseppe Sala, in the run-off. After asking Parisi to reform the party, in November Berlusconi disowned him, due to his difficult political relationship with the party's major ally, Lega Nord (LN).[6][7] Parisi thus launched his own party, EpI, and soon came to terms again with LN, aiming at being part of the same centre-right coalition.
In March 2017 Maurizio Sacconi, senator and former minister, who had been a member of the Italian Socialist Party (like Parisi), the old Forza Italia (FI) and the New Centre-Right (NCD), joined EpI, after stepping down from NCD Senate leader in February 2015 and later refusing to join the NCD-sponsored Popular Alternative (AP).[8][9][10]
Later on, the party was joined by another senator (Gabriele Albertini) and five deputies (Domenico Menorello, Giovanni Monchiero, Dino Secco, Gugliemo Vaccaro and Gianluigi Gigli),[11][12] mostly splinters of FI, NCD/AP and Civic Choice (SC). In September 2017 EpI joined forces with "The Marianne", a liberal political association led by Giovanni Negri (a former secretary of the Radical Party).[13][14][15] In November 2017, the Civics and Innovators sub-group in the Chamber, led by Monchiero, was renamed "Civics and Innovators – Energies for Italy".[16]
On 13 January 2018, EpI and CI launched a joint list named "Energies for Italy – for the Centre-right", allied with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia.[17]
On 17 December 2020 Parisi declared his farewell to politics to return to being an entrepreneur, recalling the unsuccessful attempt to give the center-right a liberal-popular impulse.[18]
