Pierfrancesco Majorino

Pierfrancesco Majorino (born 14 May 1973) is an Italian politician who is a member of the Regional Council of Lombardy since 2023. Previously, he was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2019 to 2023. Born in Milan, he was politically active in his teens and grew up in the youth wing of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). He followed up by joining the PCI's legal successor, first the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS) and then the Democrats of the Left (DS), and was among the founders of the Milanese section of the Democratic Party (PD).

Majorino served as Assessor for Social Policies of Milan during former deputy Giuliano Pisapia's term as mayor from 2011 to 2016, as well as during the first mayoral term of the former Expo 2015 government commissioner Giuseppe Sala from 2016 to 2019. During his eight years as an assessor, he designed poverty reduction initiatives, migrant reception schemes, and significantly increased municipal funding for disability services and support for female victims of violence. He became particularly well known for his efforts in providing assistance to refugees and expanding the protection of LGBTQ+ rights. He resigned from this position as a result of his election as an MEP in 2019.

In the 2019 European Parliament election, Majorino was elected as an MEP on the electoral list of the PD. On the European Parliament, he served on the Committee on Development. In 2020, he also joined the Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes in the European Union (EU). In addition to his committee assignments, Majorino was part of the European Parliament's delegations to the EU–Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean. He was also a member of several European Parliament intergroups, including those on Anti-Racism and Diversity, Fighting against Poverty, Trade Unions, and the URBAN Intergroup.

Majorino resigned as an MEP to run in the 2023 Lombard regional election, where he was the unsuccessful centre-left coalition candidate for president of Lombardy. Subsequently, he led the opposition to Attilio Fontana as a member of the Regional Council of Lombardy, joined the PD Secretariat under deputy Elly Schlein, and is considered among the leading candidates for mayor of Milan. He is also a writer and the author of several novels and essays.

Early life Family and education Born on 14 May 1973 in Milan, Majorino is the son of an anti-fascist and psychoanalyst father (who died in 2025) and a mother employed by the local government. His mother is from Bolzano and his great-grandfather hailed from Naples. He is also the nephew of Giancarlo Majorino, and who was described as even more left-wing than his father. and into the Porta Romana neighbourhood. He completed his studies, qualifying as an IT technician after obtaining a diploma in Computer Science. joining the Italian Communist Youth Federation (FGCI) – the youth wing of the PCI – at the age of 14, during his final year of middle school. During his time at the ITSOS high school, Majorino frequently faced political hostility from radical far-left student groups (Autonomi), who viewed members of the official PCI youth wing as overly moderate. Despite winning several student body elections, he regularly experienced physical confrontations from these dissident factions. serving as its national president from 1994 to 1998.

During the Mani pulite anti-corruption investigations led by Antonio Di Pietro and other magistrates in the early 1990s, Majorino, then a young student movement representative, openly supported the Italian judiciary. which was led at the time by the Minister of Social Solidarity and his party colleague Livia Turco. While working at the department, Majorino focused on youth politics and the fight against substance dependence. In this role, he also represented the Department for Social Affairs of the Italian Prime Minister's Office in Albania on the occasion of international meetings for the promotion and evaluation of projects linked to youth creativity and support for vulnerable minors. In 2007, following the dissolution of the DS approved at that year's party congress, he joined the PD, and became its floor leader (capogruppo) in the city council in 2008, he held up a banner stating "The real natural disaster for Milan: Mayor Moratti". Upon taking office as mayor, Pisapia appointed the then 31-year-old Majorino as Assessor for Social Policies. In this role, he focused extensively on projects outside Milan's historic centre, strongly rejecting the criticisms that the centre-left administration had neglected the city's outer suburbs. which was a form of municipal income support in force during the years preceding the introduction of the Inclusion Income (REI) at a national level. the Registry of Advance Healthcare Directives, which served to support people against all forms of discrimination, gender-based violence, and human trafficking.

When questioned during the primaries campaign about his long-term vision for Milan, Majorino summarised his political platform by stating that he aimed to make the city "beautiful, gentle, and welcoming to everyone". which were triggered by the outgoing mayor Pisapia's decision not to seek a second term. Notably, he expressed his desire to see "a car-free Milan by 2030".

European Parliament Election In the 2019 PD leadership election on 3 March, Majorino supported the motion of Nicola Zingaretti, the candidate with the longest administrative career and the then president of Lazio. Majorino had been an early supporter of Zingaretti. After winning 44% of the votes among party members, Zingaretti ultimately won the PD leadership with 66% of the vote on a 1.6 million turnout, and Majorino subsequently joined the party's national directorate. Also in 2019, he resigned as Assessor for Social Policy to run for the European Parliament. In the 2019 European Parliament election in Italy on 26 May, Majorino ran as a candidate for the European Parliament on the Democratic Party – We Are Europeans list in the North-West Italy constituency. Majorino was elected as an MEP, and subsequently announced his resignation as an assessor at the end of June, He served on the Committee on Development from 2 July 2019 to 19 January 2022, and again from 20 to 25 January 2022, before serving as its vice-chair from 26 January 2022 to 4 April 2023. From 24 March 2022 to 4 April 2023, he continued this mandate as a full member of its successor, the Special Committee on foreign interference in all democratic processes in the European Union, including disinformation, and the strengthening of integrity, transparency and accountability in the European Parliament (ING2). Additionally, between 24 March 2022 and 4 April 2023, he acted as a substitute member of the Special Committee on the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned and recommendations for the future. the Trade Unions Intergroup, and the URBAN Intergroup. Additionally, he focused on social inclusion within the Intergroup on Fighting against Poverty, serving as its co-chair from 2020 to 2022, before transitioning to co-chair the Intergroup on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights between 2022 and 2023. All of his intergroup mandates concluded upon the end of his European tenure on 4 April 2023.

Majorino's candidacy was well received within the Italian centre-left and was praised as "a capable, honest, and well-prepared progressive". despite competition from Moratti (a former mayor of Milan and Vice President and Assessor of Welfare of Lombardy) as the candidate of the Third Pole who won 9.87% of the vote. He was nevertheless elected to the Regional Council of Lombardy as the runner-up candidate, subsequently resigning as an MEP to lead the opposition against the centre-right coalition administration.

Democratic Party Secretariat under Elly Schlein In the 2023 PD leadership election on 26 February, Majorino supported the motion of Schlein, a deputy and former vice-president of Emilia-Romagna, who won with 53.75% of the vote against the then Emilia-Romagna president Stefano Bonaccini. In December 2022, he expressed his support for Schlein. Majorino reiterated his support during a campaign event in January 2023, sharing a commitment to rights for everyone, such as egalitarian marriage and jus soli, and on 21 February, when he publicly announced his intention to vote for Schlein, whom he said represented both change and unity. Upon Schlein's upset win in February 2023, Majorino described her victory in Milan as a signal for the Italian centre-left and the overall results as "beyond all expectations". where he is responsible for housing policy and immigration. During his tenure in the PD Secretariat, he and Schlein maintained that their proposals were not radical but—as Schlein had put it in January 2023—were "central to people's lives". In December 2025, he cited the newly elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani as a key political benchmark. He argued that to effectively address urban inequalities and the housing crisis, the centre-left coalition in Milan needed to adopt a similarly radical and uncompromising approach to social policies. Along with Mario Calabresi, a journalist and son of Luigi Calabresi, Majorino performed the best among various centre-left coalition candidates. In July 2026, following statements by Roberto Vannacci—who suggested using the military for round-ups (rastrellamenti) certain neighbourhoods, such as Rogoredo, and claimed he would return Milan to being "the city of the Madonnina and not of the maranza"—Majorino countered: "I see that the ultra-fascist Vannacci is talking nonsense about Milan and the Milanese centre-left. He should rinse his mouth out with water from the Navigli canals before spouting judgements on things he knows nothing about. We will beat him and his gang once again." Also in July 2026, he called for primaries to select the centre-left coalition candidate. By September 2026, he received the support of MEP Cecilia Strada.

Personal life Since September 2016, Majorino is married to Caterina Sarfatti, the daughter of the entrepreneur Riccardo Sarfatti (the centre-left coalition candidate in the 2005 Lombard regional election) and herself a manager of the international network committed to the fight against climate change known as C40 Cities, which is dedicated to supporting cities in implementing climate action and ensuring that urban climate strategies are inclusive and accessible, maximising their scope and beneficial impact. which is a novel set in Milan's high-rise social housing blocks, His support for the Turin-based football club represents a curious exception in the local political landscape of Milan, the city where he lives and works, On that occasion, he also joked about his wife (a fan of Inter) singing a popular football chant that repeated the club's full name, "And the Internazionale that is there", playfully noting that it was not Vladimir Lenin's International.

Works Giovani anno zero. Viaggio nella nuova generazione. Satelliti. 2000. Dopo i lampi vengono gli abeti. Pequod. 2005. L'eterno giovedì. Dalai editore. 2007. Togliendo il dolore dagli occhi. Italic/Pequod. 2011. Maledetto amore mio. Laurana editore. 2014. Milano come Lampedusa? Dossier sull'emergenza siriana (edited with Caterina Sarfatti). Novecento. 2014. Nel labirinto delle paure. Politica, precarietà e immigrazione (with Aldo Bonomi). Turin: Bollati Boringhieri. 2018. La Resa. Per amore della Lombardia: capire il disastro per guarirne le ferite (with Lorenzo Zacchetti). Milan: Ledizioni. 2020. Sorella rivoluzione. Mondadori. 2022.