Demetrio Volcic

Demetrio Volcic, also known in Slovene as Mitja Volčič (born 22 November 1931) is an Italian journalist, author, and politician of Slovenian descent. He rose to prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s as foreign correspondent for the Italian television RAI. In the late 1990s, he served as member of the Italian Senate, and later as Member of European Parliament for the European Socialist Party. He currently resides in Trieste.

Early life and journalist career

He was born as Dimitrij Volčič in Ljubljana, Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now the capital of Slovenia). His parents were Slovene political immigrants from the Italian-administered Julian March who had moved to Yugoslavia in order to avoid the repressive policies of Fascist Italianization. Despite coming from a Roman Catholic background, his parents sent him to a Serbian Orthodox elementary school in Ljubljana. After the end of World War II, his parents moved back to Trieste, where Dimitrij finished a Slovene language high school. He studied economy at the University of Trieste.

Already in his student years, he became involved in journalism. In 1956, he moved to Rome, where he worked for the Italian national broadcast RAI. Due to his knowledge of Slavic languages and interest in Eastern Europe, he was sent as a reporter to the Communist bloc. He worked as a foreign correspondent in Prague, Vienna, Moscow, and finally Bonn. He also wrote for several Italian journals, including La Stampa, La Repubblica, L'Indipendente. He also wrote regular columns for the Primorski dnevnik, the Slovene language daily newspaper of Trieste.

Between 1993 and 1994, he served as director of TG1, at the time the most watched news program in Italy.

Between 1994 and 1996, he taught political sciences at the University of Trieste.

Political career

Volcic entered politics in 1997, when he successfully ran for by-election to the Italian Senate after the death of the senator Darko Bratina. He ran as an independent candidate with the support of the Democratic Party of the Left. In 1999, he was elected to the European Parliament on the list of the Democrats of the Left.

Sources

• 'Volčič, Mitja' In: Primorski slovenski biografski leksikon (Gorizia: 1992), pp. 259-260