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Maria Rosaria " Rosy" Bindi (; born 12 February 1951) is an Italian politician and former president of the Antimafia Commission. She began her political career in Christian Democracy (DC), becoming a member of the European Parliament in 1989. After the dissolution of the DC, she joined the centre-left-leaning Italian People's Party (PPI) in 1994 and Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy (DL) in 2002.
Bindi served as Minister of Health and Minister for Family Policies in the centre-left coalition governments of Romano Prodi and Massimo D'Alema from 1996 to 2000 and 2006 to 2008. In 2007, she was among the founding members of the Democratic Party (PD), and was the party's president from 2009 to 2013. Elected a Chamber of Deputies in 1994, after a total of six legislatures, she did not run for re-election in 2018 and left the PD, ending her political career.
Following the coalition's victory in the 1996 Italian general election, Bindi was named Minister of Health, a position she held in the governments led by Massimo D'Alema. During her tenure at the Ministry of Health, through Bindi's circolare of 2 December 1996, electroshock therapy (ECT) was re-introduced in Italy to treat psychiatrized patients. It was later corrected through Bindi's circolare of 15 February 1999, which limited the use of ECT in particular cases but did not totally revoke it. In 1999, she also reformed Italy's national health service, closely following Anselmi's reform of 1979. In addition to the restrictions on ECT, other reforms included the definitive closure of psychiatric hospitals, the bills on the rights and duties of cohabitations, which brought criticism from Catholics because too radical and from LGBT people because too moderate, and on equality between natural and legitimate children. Under Bindi, the Ministry of Health contributed to the rewriting of Title V of the Constitution of Italy with the redefinition of the relationship between state and territory in the healthcare sector.
In the 2001 Italian general election, Bindi was elected for the third time to the Chamber of Deputies in the constituency of Cortona representing the DL. After the victory of The Union in the 2006 Italian general election, she became Minister for Family Policies, serving in that post until the results of the 2008 Italian general election returned the Silvio Berlusconi-led centre-right coalition back to power. As Minister for Family Policies, she was responsible for the establishment of the First National Conference on the Family. One of the founders and strongest supporters of the PD, the result of a merge between the DC's centre-left-leaning legal successor parties with those of the Italian Communist Party, Bindi competed for the 2007 PD leadership election, and was the distant runner-up; she received 12.93% of the vote cast. She continued to work for the party, leading the Democrats Really faction, until the 2018 Italian general election, when she did not seek re-election, and ended her political career.
From 2008 to 2013, Bindi was the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies. From 2009 to 2013, she was president of the PD. In the 2009 PD leadership election, Bindi supported eventual winner Pierluigi Bersani. She strongly criticized the 101 party deputies that did not vote for Prodi and thus sank his candidacy during the 2013 Italian presidential election. In the 2013 PD leadership election that ensued after Bersani resigned due to Prodi's failed candidacy, she did not endorse neither eventual winner Matteo Renzi nor Gianni Cuperlo, who succeeded her as the party's president; she said that she did not recognize herself in neither candidate. During the 2017 PD leadership election, Bindi voted for the runner-up Andrea Orlando. Later that same year, she said that the PD under Renzi had betrayed The Olive Tree and described it as Berlusconi's crutch. In 2018, Bindi called for the dissolution of the PD, a position she repeated in 2022. In an interview to La Repubblica on 12 February 2021, Bindi reiterated that she no longer recognized herself in the PD, and that is why she continues to not renew her PD membership card. In an interview to La Stampa that same day, she said: "I think it's time for women to run for party leadership." In the 2023 PD leadership election, Bindi did not endorse neither eventual winner Elly Schlein nor Stefano Bonaccini. Later that same year, she took part to a PD rally after many years. She clarified that she would not return to the party as a member.
In March 2017, Bindi was the head of an Antimafia Commission about the alleged ties between the then Juventus chairman Andrea Agnelli and the 'Ndrangheta within the inquiry about alleged tickets sales to 'Ndrangheta members. Bindi commented: "The mafias in Italy even reach Juventus, this is clear." A supporter of Juventus rival Fiorentina, Bindi ironically congratulated Agnelli for winning the 2017 Coppa Italia final and sent her best wishes for the 2017 UEFA Champions League final but said that in the league she "must respect the pluralism of the fans". It later emerged that a wiretap implicating Agnelli, which Bindi had cited during a parliamentary audition in response to the objections of Agnelli's lawyer and the doubts of the then PD senator Stefano Esposito, was fabricated by the public prosecutor Giuseppe Pecoraro, a supporter of Juventus rival SSC Napoli who had said that he hoped Juventus would not win the scudetto, and Agnelli and the club were acquitted of the charge. Although Juventus was the only club investigated by sports justice, the Antimafia Commission report also cited Catania FC, Genoa CFC, SS Lazio, and Napoli, and concluded that "the largely criminal background of the representatives of organized groups is the ideal humus to allow the infiltration of mafia-type organized crime" and that these cases "paint a varied picture". Bindi commented: "Football, as a body, is not healthy enough to consider itself immune from mafias, it is a world rich in money and the possibility of creating consensus."
In 2018, Bindi was made honorary president of the Fundamental Health Law Association, which was founded together with health policy experts, doctors, epidemiologists, and jurists in defense of public health. She published several documents on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy on the national health service and the risks of privatization of the public service. In 2020, Bindi joined the scientific committee of lavialibera, a bimonthly information and in-depth magazine on mafias, corruption, the environment, and migration directed by Luigi Ciotti. In May 2021, she joined a working group on excommunication of mafias established in the Vatican at the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, with the aim of following up on the excommunication of mafiosi pronounced by Pope Francis in Calabria on 21 June 2014. In June 2021, Bindi became a professor at the Pontifical University Antonianum, where she carries out training and research activities on the topics of legality and the fight against mafias in the analysis and study of criminal and mafia phenomenon, in collaboration with the Department of Liberating Maria from the mafias of the Pontifical Academy of Mary.
In December 2023, Bindi said that the European Union can be reborn through criticism of capitalism. About the relations between capitalism and the European Union, Bindi stated: "We thought that democracy had won in, but instead capitalism won. Europe has lost its social function and the ability to guide the rules of the market and the liberal right has imposed Neoliberalism, with the capitalism of shareholders and profit. We cannot help but make this self-criticism, also in reference to the Third Way, which has not been able to react adequately." About liberal democracy and the threats to it, she said: "Democracy is faltering on this continent, public policies and policies on common goods, from work to welfare, have been backwards since the 1980s, and when a democracy no longer guarantees respect for fundamental rights, the mechanism of individualism is triggered." On the issue of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bindi took a classic Italian Catholic pacifist view, saying: "Now the war is inside Europe, is the EU aware that it is the force of politics and not of weapons that can end it?" On the Middle East and the 2023 escalation of the Israeli–Palestine conflict, she stated: "It's humiliating to see European leaders going to Tel Aviv to say different things." In April 2024, ahead of the 2024 European Parliament election in Italy, Bindi defended the PD candidates, such as Marco Tarquinio and Cecilia Strada, who held different views from the party on issues like Ukraine and war, saying that voters shared Tarquinio and Strada's views more than the party's leaders.
In response to Gennaro Sangiuliano, who defined himself as both anti-communist and anti-fascist, and asked Bindi to do the same in January 2024, she said: "I am definitely anti-fascist. I always say that I am a woman of the left but I have never been a communist, however in my small way with my political militancy, from the DC to the PD, I believe I have contributed to ensuring that communism, which was present in the life of our country, was a factor integral part of Italian democracy. The profound difference is that the Italian communists wrote the Constitution. The Italian fascists did not." About the Meloni government, of which Sangiuliano was then part as Minister of Culture, she further commented: "This government is not only not anti-fascist, it is also anti-republican." She further explained to Sangiuliano that while the Constitution of Italy recognizes private property and profit as legitimate, it attributes a social purpose to them. She said: "The richness of our Constitution has a social purpose. There are common goods and public goods which are more important than individual goods. Since this lesson has been forgotten, school, public health, safety in the workplace, and on the streets have been abandoned. And therefore inequalities increase."
| Rosy Bindi | The Olive Tree | 60,443 | 65.1 | |
| Anna Duchini | Pole for Freedoms | 29,193 | 31.4 | |
| Others | 3,287 | 3.5 | ||
| Total | 92,923 | 100.0 | ||
| Rosy Bindi | The Olive Tree | 56,452 | 61.5 | |
| Leonardo Giomarelli | House of Freedoms | 32,623 | 35.5 | |
| Others | 2,794 | 3.0 | ||
| Total | 91,869 | 100.0 | ||
Bindi was often the target of Silvio Berlusconi's sexist jibes, and from other centre-right coalition politicians, such as Vittorio Sgarbi, who once referred to the Italian president Sergio Mattarella as "the unexpressed twin of Rosy Bindi", whose role as president of the Antimafia Commission he criticized. When Berlusconi died in June 2023, she said that "sanctification is not good for Italy, national mourning is inappropriate", arguing that "Berlusconism must be elaborated", and that the national day of mourning was "disrespectful toward the majority" who opposed him. Her views were shared by other individuals, including among others Andrea Crisanti, Luigi de Magistris, and Tomaso Montanari.
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