Presidente NMI / NMI Party President

Antonino Serraino is the National President of Nuovo Mezzogiorno Italiano (NMI), an international executive, legal scholar, researcher, and university Assistant Lecturer.

His professional, academic, and political career has developed across Italy and internationally, combining more than thirty years of senior-level experience in the global energy sector with a strong legal education and an expanding body of research focused on the relationship between the State, law, organised crime, economic development, and the Mezzogiorno.

His decision to enter political life directly stems from the conviction that the economic and social divide between Northern and Southern Italy can no longer be addressed through occasional interventions, welfare dependency, or emergency-driven policies.

For Serraino, the Mezzogiorno represents one of Italy’s most significant economic, cultural, energy, and strategic assets. It must therefore be placed in a position to compete on equal terms through modern infrastructure, productive investment, effective public administration, employment, education, security, and equal access to public services.

Serraino has accumulated more than thirty years of experience in the international energy, oil, and trading sectors, holding senior managerial and executive positions across Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and Africa.

For many years, he worked within the Tamoil/Oilinvest Group, where he held, among other positions, roles as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, General Manager, and Chief Financial Officer in a number of Group companies, while also holding direct responsibility for international trading, supply, and commercial development activities.

He has directed international commercial, operational, and strategic activities, coordinating teams and offices across several countries and working with some of the world’s leading oil companies as well as major national oil corporations.

His professional experience encompasses international trading, energy procurement and supply, contract negotiation, risk management, corporate governance, business development, logistics, strategic planning, and the management of international corporate structures.

He subsequently served as Chairman of the Geneva-based trading company Edima SA.

From 2022 to 2026, he was a Director of Campanile Consultants Ltd in the United Kingdom, where he provided strategic and commercial consultancy, primarily within the energy sector.

This extensive international experience has profoundly shaped his political outlook: a vision of the Mezzogiorno capable of attracting capital and investment, developing modern infrastructure, making full strategic use of its geographical position in the Mediterranean, and becoming a leading participant in emerging Italian and European policies concerning energy, logistics, industry, innovation, and international trade.

Alongside his managerial career, Serraino has pursued a broad academic path encompassing law, international affairs, economic strategy, and the humanities.

He holds an LLB with Honours from the University of Kent, where his academic work included the law governing United Nations peacekeeping operations and emergency legislation in Italy and Northern Ireland.

He subsequently obtained an LLM in International Energy Law and Regulation from The City Law School, City University of London, with a particular focus on the legal and regulatory dimensions of the international energy sector.

He has also undertaken a programme in International Business Strategy and holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Westminster.

He is currently completing a PhD in Law at the University of Kent, where he also serves as an Assistant Lecturer, teaching Banking Law and other areas of law.

His doctoral research critically examines Italian anti-mafia legislation and the relationship between criminal law, exceptional powers, and the legal construction of organised crime, with particular attention to their historical and institutional implications for the Mezzogiorno.

His research also investigates the emergence and development of organised criminal organisations in Italy and, from a comparative perspective, in other jurisdictions, examining how criminal phenomena, public institutions, and legal categories have evolved and interacted over time.

His academic work addresses issues including Article 416-bis of the Italian Criminal Code, the 41-bis prison regime, preventive measures and confiscation, the proportionality of anti-mafia measures, the presumption of innocence, and the historical relationship between Italian state formation, emergency legislation, and the governance of the Mezzogiorno.

This research is not motivated by any desire to weaken the fight against organised crime. Rather, it is grounded in the conviction that legality and the rule of law must advance together.

The fight against criminal organisations must be strong, effective, and determined, but it must not develop into the permanent criminalisation of territories, families, or communities, nor into the indiscriminate erosion of the fundamental safeguards that define the rule of law.

It is from the convergence of these experiences, managerial, international, legal, and academic, that the political project of Nuovo Mezzogiorno Italiano has emerged.

NMI begins from a straightforward principle:

the divide between Northern and Southern Italy is neither inevitable nor a natural characteristic of the country. It is a structural inequality that requires a structural response.

Serraino advocates a policy for the Mezzogiorno founded not upon dependency or assistance, but upon national convergence: modern infrastructure, industrial development, access to credit, energy, innovation, education and training, healthcare, digitalisation, the return of talent, and the strengthening of administrative capacity.

The objective is progressively to bring the South to the same economic, infrastructural, and social standards enjoyed by the most developed areas of the country — not through privilege or uncontrolled transfers of public resources, but through productive investment, administrative accountability, and the rigorous evaluation of outcomes.

His vision also regards the Mezzogiorno as a natural strategic platform between Europe and the Mediterranean.

Ports, energy, the blue economy, universities, agriculture, technology, culture, tourism, and industry should form part of an integrated development strategy capable of generating employment, attracting investment, and creating lasting economic value within Southern communities.

Particular attention is given to Italians living abroad and to the younger generations who leave the Mezzogiorno each year in search of opportunities elsewhere.

The objective is not simply to slow emigration, but to create the conditions in which leaving becomes a choice and returning becomes a genuine possibility.

At the same time, Serraino advocates a far-reaching modernisation of politics and public institutions: greater transparency, stronger accountability for public office-holders, a reduction in political privileges, action against nepotism, greater efficiency within the justice system, and the concrete assessment of the results achieved through public expenditure.

Legality, development, and economic freedom must advance together. The State must act decisively against crime and corruption, while at the same time protecting and supporting legitimate businesses, citizens, young people, and communities seeking to build their future in the Mezzogiorno.

For this reason, Nuovo Mezzogiorno Italiano does not aspire to be merely a territorial or protest party.

Its ambition is to contribute to the construction of a new national compact between North and South, in which the development of the Mezzogiorno is finally recognised not as an exclusively Southern question, but as one of the fundamental strategic interests of Italy as a whole.

For Antonino Serraino, the principle underlying this political project can be expressed in a few words:

The South is not a burden on Italy. It is a reservoir of future potential.

The South is not a problem to be managed. It is a national power waiting to be released.

Investing in the Mezzogiorno means strengthening Italy.