Fabio De Masi | |
Office: | Member of the Bundestag for Hamburg |
Term Start: | 24 October 2017 |
Term End: | 26 October 2021 |
Predecessor: | Jan van Aken |
Constituency: | The Left Party List |
Office1: | Member of the European Parliament for Germany |
Term Start1: | 1 July 2014 |
Term End1: | 23 October 2017 |
Successor1: | Martin Schirdewan |
Birth Date: | 7 March 1980 |
Birth Place: | Groß-Gerau, West Germany |
Otherparty: | The Left (before 2022) Independent (2022–2024) |
Party: | Wagenknecht Group (since 2024) |
Alma Mater: | University of Cape Town |
Citizenship: | Germany • Italy |
Fabio Valeriano Lanfranco De Masi (born 7 March 1980) is a German-Italian politician. He was a member of the German Bundestag from 2017 to 2021 and was a member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Germany from 1 July 2014 to 23 October 2017. Until September 2022 he was a member of The Left Party, part of the European United Left–Nordic Green Left.[1]
He joined party "Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht", BSW on 8 January 2024.
In the 2014 European elections, De Masi became a Member of the European Parliament. During his time in office, he served on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Special Committee on Tax Rulings and Other Measures Similar in Nature or Effect (TAXE 2).[2] [3] In addition to his committee assignments, he was part of the Parliament's delegation for relations with South Africa.
De Masi was a member of the German Bundestag since the 2017 elections, representing Hamburg. In parliament, he was serving on the Finance Committee. In addition to his committee assignments, he was part of the German-British Parliamentary Friendship Group, the German-Italian Parliamentary Friendship Group, and the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the Southern African States. Since 2019, he was also a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly. In March 2021 De Masi said that he will not run for the Bundestag in the 2021 German federal election.[4]
Di Masi has long been a companion of the political figure Sahra Wagenknecht. He founded the “Get Up” ("Aufstehen") movement together with Wagenknecht in 2018.[5]
On 13 September 2022, De Masi announced that he left The Left Party, stating that he would not want anymore to be taken into responsibility for the blatant failure of the relevant actors in this party.“[6] [7]
He joined the new populist party of his former boss Sahra Wagenknecht. De Masi appeared at the newly formed party's press conference on January 8, 2024, and indicated that he was seeking political office with the BSW at 2024 European Parliament election.[8] Together with Thomas Geisel, he wants to become the party's top candidate.[9]
While other members abandoned the Left Party after Wagenknecht's call to end sanctions against Russia,[10] de Masi followed her and continues to call for "freezing" the war[11] and spreads narratives suggesting that Russia's aggression was a reaction to a NATO expansion [12] or that a peace treaty would have been possible in 2023.[13] He has previously also characterized the downing of MH-17 in 2014 as a "crash", rather than a shooting down.[14]