Emma Bonino, Italy’s activist commissioner, dies at 78 – POLITICO

Indefatigable Italian rights activist and European heavyweight Emma Bonino died aged 78, her party Più Europa announced on Friday.

A former European commissioner and member of the European Parliament, Bonino held a series of senior positions at home, serving as lawmaker, senator and two-time minister, in a career that straddled Brussels and Rome.

For the EU, she was chief among the voices who helped establish the bloc as a defender of international human rights and became a passionate advocate for European federalism. For Italy, she was a radical liberal who refused to neatly fit into her country’s entrenched left-right divide, garnering respect across ideological lines without abandoning her activist roots.