The Diplomat
The Italian government has chosen as its new ambassador to Spain an expert in European affairs who was currently head of the Italian mission in Libya. He is Giuseppe Maria Buccino Grimaldi.
Buccino will fill the vacancy left several weeks ago by Riccardo Guariglia, who was appointed Secretary General of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The new Italian ambassador was born in Naples in 1961, holds a degree in law and entered the diplomatic service in 1988. Since then, he has held various posts at the Farnesina, the headquarters of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in Italian diplomatic representations abroad.
Much of his professional career has been spent in postings related to the European institutions. In 1994, he joined the Italian Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels, where he oversaw relations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union.
During the Italian Presidency of the European Council in the first half of 1996, he chaired the Working Group on Asia and subsequently followed the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference.
Subsequently, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he participated in the team that defined the Italian position at the Nice Intergovernmental Conference, which concluded in December 2000.
Between 2001 and 2004 he was head of Office VI of the newly created Directorate General for European Integration, responsible for legal-institutional matters and followed the preparation of the declaration on the Future of Europe finalised by the Laeken European Council. During the Italian Presidency in the second half of 2003, he followed the work on the European Constitution.
His experience in European affairs was completed in 2015 with his appointment as Director General for the European Union at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a post in which he remained until 2019.
That year, Giuseppe Maria Buccino was appointed ambassador to Libya, a post he held until now, and in which he had already been for the first time between 2011 and 2015, until the outbreak of the crisis in that country.
His activity abroad is completed with a stay at the Italian Embassy in Beirut in 1991, at the beginning of his diplomatic career, and another in Doha between 2004 and 2008.
Outside the Ministry, Buccino was, between 2009 and 2011, deputy diplomatic adviser to the Presidency of the Republic.
He is also the author of numerous articles on European integration and institutional issues and has been a visiting professor at several Italian universities on topics related to EU institutions.
