New Italian Socialist Party

The New Italian Socialist Party ( Italian: Nuovo PSI , NPSI ) ^[1] is a small political party in Italy , professing a social democratic ideology, and one of those claiming to be the successor to the historic Italian Socialist Party , dissolved after a judicial storm in the early 1990s ( see Operation Clean Hands ).

The party, which has long guided the center-right parties of Silvio Berlusconi ( Forza Italia / Il Popolo della Libertà / Forza Italia (2013) ), was founded in 2001 as Partito Socialista - Nuovo PSI , but after the split in the Socialist Party, Gianni De Michelis in 2007 accepted current name. Most of the party members were former followers of Bettino Craxi (some of his supporters had previously joined Forza Italia ), whom they often portrayed as a “victim of political persecution,” despite numerous cases of Craxi being accused of political corruption . That is why the party has been an ally of the center-right coalition ( Casa delle Libertà, CdL ) for most of its history, while the center-left coalition was dominated by former communists and left-wing Christian democrats, formerly the main rivals of the socialists.

The main leader of the party was Gianni De Michelis , who left the party in 2007 and was replaced by Stefano Caldoro . In 2007, some members left the party to join the new center-left Italian Socialist Party , while those that remained in the NPSI joined the center-right PdL. From 2010 to 2015, party leader Stefano Caldoro served as President of the PdL Campaign .