ROME/GENEVA, 30 JANUARY – Vincenzo Grassi has been appointed as the new Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva. Grassi replaces his colleague, Ambassador, Gian Lorenzo Cornado, in office since 2018.
The Geneva Representation is in charge of the relations with the 22 International Organizations located in the city, eight of which are part of the UN framework. The Geneva IO can be divided into three main thematic areas, namely health: WHO (World Health Organization), Global Fund (responsible for funding the fight against malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis), GAVI (Alliance for Vaccines), UNAIDS (the UN Agency in charge of coordinating global action against AIDS); Humanitarian aid: UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency led by the Italian Filippo Grandi), IOM (International Organization for Migration), the International Committee and the International Federation of the Red Cross (ICRC and IFRC), OCHA (UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs), UNDRR (the United Nations Office for Risk Reduction); and, finally, economy and trade: the World Trade Organization alongside its ITC centre, UNCTAD (the UN Committee for Trade and Economic Development), the World Economic Forum (WEF), the UNECE (Economic Commission for Europe, one of the five reporting to ECOSOC), WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) and ILO (International Labour Organization).
The new Representative’s reference to the “commitment in multilateral fora in an era of universal challenges in the environmental, health and social fields” is, therefore, not coincidental. The headquarters of the Italian Representation host the Mission to the Disarmament Conference as well, led since May 2022 by Ambassador Leonardo Bencini. In his mandate, Ambassador Grassi will enjoy the support of his Deputy Representative, Minister Marie Sol Fulci, daughter of the well known Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci, who died a year ago.
Vincenzo Grassi, born in Naples, joined the diplomatic corps in 1984 at the Directorate General for Economic Affairs. His first experience, from 1987 to 1990, was at the Italian Embassy in Cairo. In 1990 he moved to Brussels at the Permanent Mission of Italy to the then European Community, thus beginning a long career in contact with European affairs. In 1994 he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, another time to the DG Economic Affairs, where he remained until 1998, when he was sent to Paris. In 2002 he returned to the Rome’s headquarters, in the Directorate General for European Integration. From 2007 to 2012, another mandate in Belgium, where he was Deputy Permanent Representative of Italy to the European Union in Brussels, then in 2012 he returned home to the Directorate General for the European Union, for which he has been Deputy Director General and Central Director for European Integration since 2013, as well as being appointed Head of the Department for European Policies at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers. In 2014 he moved to the General Direction for the Promotion of the Countrywide System, before another turn in Belgium as Ambassador of Italy in 2015. A scholar with various periods of specialization within the best universities in the world and a proficient writer, from 2016 to 2020 he held the post of Secretary General at the European University Institute. Lastly, before arriving in Geneva he spent another two years at the MOFA’s European Union DG.
