Raffaele Costa

Raffaele Costa was an Italian liberal politician, lawyer and publisher whose career stretched from the First Republic into the Berlusconi era. Born in Mondovi, in the province of Cuneo, on 8 September 1936, he died in the same Piedmontese town on 11 September 2026, three days after his 90th birthday, after a long illness. State funeral rites were set for 14 September 2026 in Mondovi's Cathedral of San Donato.

Trained in law and political science, Costa entered national politics with the Italian Liberal Party (PLI). He was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1976 and remained a deputy, with only brief interruptions of role, until 2006. Between 1979 and 1989 he served repeatedly as undersecretary: at Justice under Cossiga, at Foreign Affairs under Spadolini and Fanfani, at the Interior under Craxi, and at Public Works under Goria and De Mita. In the early 1990s he held full cabinet rank: Minister for the Coordination of Community Policies and Regional Affairs in Giuliano Amato's first government (1992-1993), Minister of Transport and Navigation under Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (1993-1994), and Minister of Health in Silvio Berlusconi's first government (1994-1995). As health minister he became nationally known for surprise "blitz" inspections of hospitals, aimed at exposing waste and privilege in the public system; he later collected related arguments in books such as L'Italia degli sprechi and L'Italia dei privilegi.

Inside the PLI he rose to vice-secretary (1985-1986) and, in the party's final season, to national secretary from spring 1993 until the PLI dissolved in February 1994. He then founded the Unione di Centro, which allied with Forza Italia and ran its candidates on Berlusconi's lists. In 1997 he stood for mayor of Turin for the Polo per le Liberta, losing the runoff to incumbent Valentino Castellani by fewer than 5,000 votes. From 1999 to 2004 he sat in the European Parliament with the European People's Party group, serving on the Environment and Public Health committee. In 2004 he was elected president of the Province of Cuneo on the first ballot with 53.5 percent; he left that office in 2009. Briefly a Piedmont regional councillor for the People of Freedom in 2010, he resigned months later for health reasons.

Away from office Costa remained a writer and editor. He founded and directed the fortnightly Il Duemila from 1971 and published memoirs and polemics including Il dottore e' fuori stanza, La mia prima repubblica and Politica e Giustizia ai tempi delle BR. His son Enrico Costa followed him into national politics and later became Forza Italia's group leader in the Chamber of Deputies. After his death, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called him a protagonist of Italian liberalism; Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, once his parliamentary assistant, remembered a "true liberal" who fought bureaucratic excess. Mondovi declared a day of civic mourning for the state funeral. His longevity in the Chamber made him a living link between the small secular parties of the First Republic and the centre-right that replaced them. Colleagues remembered not only the ministerial titles but a personal style that mixed courtroom clarity with provincial rootedness: he could debate European directives in Rome in the morning and still sound like a Mondovi notable by evening.

The timing of his death underlined that dual memory. Emma Bonino, another Cuneo-province figure of a different liberal-radical family, died the same day; Italian media and the government paired their state funerals, yet Piedmontese liberals insisted Costa's quieter anti-bureaucracy record deserved equal weight. In the Senate a minute of silence and words from President Ignazio La Russa marked the institutional farewell, while local papers in Cuneo filled pages with mayors, councillors and former provincial allies calling him a man of values.

For younger Italians who knew him mainly through Enrico Costa's later career, Raffaele's archive of books and Il Duemila issues remains the clearest guide to his liberalism: impatient with red tape, sceptical of sacralised fashion in politics as in clothes of governance, and convinced that free citizens needed a lighter state more than a louder one.