Emma Bonino, a European of Tomorrow – A Fighter, a Beacon, and the Enduring Voice of a Strategic Europe
by Nora Ahmeti
Tirana Times, September 13, 2026 – Emma Bonino spent much of her life fighting for a Europe that did not yet exist.
She imagined a continent that would be more than a market, more than a currency, more than a permanent negotiation among national capitals: a Europe able to speak with political authority, defend liberty at home and assume strategic responsibility beyond its borders. For decades, the idea often sounded premature. Today, with Europe once again confronted by war, geopolitical rivalry and questions about its own power, it sounds less like a dream than an unfinished necessity.
Bonino died on September 11 at the age of 78, closing one of the most remarkable chapters in modern Italian and European public life. From the Radical battles of the 1970s to the Italian Parliament, the European Parliament, the European Commission and eventually Italy’s Foreign Ministry, she remained faithful to a rare constellation of convictions: individual freedom, human dignity, international justice and the political unification of Europe.
“Emma Bonino, a European of tomorrow: a fighter, a beacon, and the enduring voice of a strategic Europe,” Albert Rakipi, Chairman at the Albanian Institute for International Studies wrote on his X account on September 11.
“European of tomorrow” may be the phrase that best captures her.
Bonino had an uncommon political instinct for causes whose time had not yet arrived. She entered battles when they were still uncomfortable, unpopular or regarded as impossible, and lived long enough to see many of them move from the margins into Europe’s political and moral mainstream.
Her Europeanism was not ceremonial. Drawing intellectually on Altiero Spinelli, she proudly called herself a Radical, a Spinellian and a federalist. She did not believe that Europe could indefinitely remain an economic giant governed strategically by compromises among sovereign governments. Its destination, for her, had to be political federation — ultimately, the United States of Europe.
As Italy’s foreign minister in 2013, she reduced that belief to a characteristically uncompromising formula: “Federal Europe? Now or never.”
She understood early the strategic weakness hidden inside European prosperity. Twenty-seven governments could coordinate, negotiate and compromise, but cooperation alone did not necessarily create power. Without a genuine common foreign and defence policy, Europe risked remaining economically formidable yet politically hesitant.
She carried that conviction almost to the end. During the 2024 European elections, Bonino was still calling for stronger common institutions, a shared foreign and defence policy and a European budget capable of supporting Europe’s ambitions.
Yet her Europe was never simply an institutional architecture. For Bonino, politics began with people.
Alongside Marco Pannella, she fought the great civil-liberties battles that transformed Italian society, from divorce and abortion to individual freedom. She entered the Chamber of Deputies in 1976 and, three years later, became part of the first generation of directly elected members of the European Parliament. As European Commissioner from 1995 to 1999, she dealt with humanitarian aid and became closely associated with civilians caught in crises from the Balkans to Afghanistan.
Her causes crossed borders as easily as they crossed political comfort zones: abolition of the death penalty, opposition to female genital mutilation, the creation of the International Criminal Court, women’s rights, humanitarian action and dialogue between Europe and the Muslim world. After the September 11 attacks, she moved to Cairo, studied Arabic and sought to deepen understanding across the Mediterranean.
Mark Leonard and Mabel van Oranje, writing for the European Council on Foreign Relations, described her as “a giant of European foreign policy.” A founding member and later co-chair of ECFR, Bonino combined qualities rarely found together in politics: radical ambition and practical instinct, moral impatience and an ability to build coalitions. She could move from protest in the streets to diplomacy, from civil society to European institutions, without ever losing the temperament of an activist. Her death, they wrote, leaves Europe “a greyer and less vital place.”
The breadth of the tributes that followed revealed the unusual place she occupied across political divides.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola perhaps captured her character most vividly: “Emma Bonino never waited for the world to be ready. She always chose to go forward, showing others the way.” “The Europe she fought for will miss her,” Metsola added.
Pina Picierno recalled Bonino’s “clarity and courage,” while Iratxe García Pérez remembered “a great Europeanist, a democrat and an example of political commitment.” European Commission Executive Vice-President Raffaele Fitto called her “a protagonist of our time in Italy and in Europe.”
In Italy, respect crossed ideological boundaries. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, despite belonging to a very different political tradition, recognised Bonino as a distinctive and powerful voice in the country’s public life. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani recalled that, beyond their political differences, they shared a “strong Europeanist feeling” and common battles against the death penalty and female genital mutilation.
Romano Prodi remembered her “absolute loyalty,” vitality and lucidity. Democratic Party leader Elly Schlein spoke of her rigour, seriousness, competence, determination and courage, as well as her belief in Europe as a “common home.” Nicola Zingaretti offered perhaps the most human of assessments: one could disagree profoundly with Bonino and still trust her, because she was genuine.
Giuseppe Conte recalled her struggles for civil rights, international justice and abolition of capital punishment. Carlo Calenda called her “the last great protagonist” of the civil-rights battles that helped modernise Italy.
For those who had shared her Radical journey, the loss was more personal. +Europa secretary Riccardo Magi remembered one of the clearest, bravest and freest figures in Italian political life. Her political testament, he said, remained the struggle for “a united, democratic and federal Europe: the United States of Europe.”
Marco Cappato, after years of common battles and occasional disagreements, suggested that the most faithful way to remember Bonino was not through nostalgia, but by continuing the struggles for freedom, liberal democracy and, above all, “her” Europe.
Even her relationship with Pope Francis revealed something essential about her character. They disagreed profoundly on important ethical questions, yet Francis described her in 2016 as one of the “great figures of Italy today,” particularly praising her work in Africa. Their relationship grew into one of dialogue and personal respect — evidence that Bonino could defend her convictions fiercely without refusing conversation with those who did not share them.
Emma Bonino belonged to a generation for whom Europe was not a finished achievement but an unfinished political project.
She wanted a Europe capable not merely of regulating, but of acting; not merely of defending prosperity, but of defending freedom; not merely of coordinating national foreign policies, but of possessing a strategic purpose of its own.
She did not live to see that Europe.
Perhaps that is why the description “a European of tomorrow” carries such force.
Bonino understood that political courage often means defending tomorrow’s necessity while it still appears to be today’s impossibility. Many of the battles she chose followed precisely that path.
A fighter, because she rarely chose the easy cause.
A beacon, because others repeatedly arrived at political ground she had occupied years before.
And an enduring voice of a strategic Europe because the great question that accompanied her life remains unanswered: whether Europe will finally become a political actor equal to its history, its wealth and its responsibilities — or remain an unfinished union searching for the courage to become one.
Emma Bonino did not live to see her United States of Europe.
But she made it harder for Europe to forget that, one day, it may have no choice but to build it.
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