(born September 29, 1936) is an Italian politician, entrepreneur, and media proprietor. He is the leader of the Forza Italia political movement, a centre-right party he founded in 1993 in Rome. Berlusconi has three times held office as President of the Council of Ministers, most recently from 2001 to 2006.
Berlusconi is the founder and main shareholder of Fininvest, among the ten largest Italian privately-owned companies 1.pdf" target="_blank">Le principali società industriali e di servizi italiane , operating in media and finance including three national TV channels. Together these account for nearly half the Italian TV market. He owns three (out of seven) national television channels as well as some of the country's most important newspapers. He is also well known for being, since 1986, the president of _A.C. Milan, a prominent Italian football team. Under his presidency it has won a number of national and international trophies. According to Forbes magazine, Berlusconi is Italy's richest person, a self-made man (see section) with personal assets worth $11 billion (USD) in 2007, making him the world's 51st richest person.
His rise in the political arena was extremely rapid. He was elected President of the Council of Ministers following the March 1994 elections, when Forza Italia gained a relative majority a mere three months after having been officially launched. He formed the first unabashedly right-wing administration in 34 years. However, his cabinet collapsed after seven months, due to internal disagreements in the centre-right coalition. In the 1996 elections, he ran for Prime Minister again but was defeated by centre-left candidate Romano Prodi. From 1996 to 2001 he was the leader of the parliamentary opposition. In the 2001 elections, he was again the centre-right candidate for Prime Minister and won against the centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli. Berlusconi then formed his second and third governments, which together lasted five years.
Berlusconi was leader of the centre-right coalition in the May 2006 elections, which he lost by a very narrow margin, his counterpart being again Romano Prodi. On 17 May, 2006 he was formally succeeded by Prodi.
In economics, Berlusconi has endorsed conservative policies, such as lowering taxes and generally placing fewer constraints on enterprise, in an effort to encourage growth. In foreign policy, his views have been strongly pro-American, even at the expense of causing some damage to relations with other European countries; in particular he supported George W. Bush in the U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq by sending Italian troops to join the "Coalition of the willing" (after the attack, only for peacekeeping). In social policy matters the Berlusconi government has implemented a conservative program: passing stricter laws concerning immigration, artificial insemination and drug use.
His ownership of an Italian television network has been controversial. According to Berlusconi's adversaries, the Mediaset (Fininvest's media division) TV channels have played a crucial role in his political success by airing propaganda during news or other information-oriented programming. In contrast, his supporters claim that the networks have always maintained a neutral political stance. After Berlusconi's election as Prime Minister, the left accused him of also abusing his position as premier to control the publicly owned RAI TV channels. In practice, they maintain, this permits him to control almost all TV sources of information, while the right insists that the RAI channels are, if anything, biased in favor of the centre-left. According to independent observers blank">Berlusconi relishes power of TV, BBC News, February 23, 2006 , two of the State channels (Rai 1 and Rai 2) had been indeed controlled by Berlusconi's government, while Rai 3 managed to retain independence and a critical stance. Such control, in a famous example, was displayed when Berlusconi called Member of European Parliament Martin Schultz a "Nazi kapo", and the Rai 1 news program showed the incident with no audio and offering a misleading account. Political debate in Italy has become rather alienating, as the contenders often seem to completely lack a shared information source regarded as neutral and reliable. Although Berlusconi officially resigned from all functions in his commercial group in 1994 upon entering political office, he is still the largest shareholder and is perceived to have retained control.
Before 2008 Italian general election he launched the People of Freedom, the party where will run together _Forza Italia, National Alliance and other liberal and consevative minor parties.
