New Permanent Representative of Italy Pays Courtesy Call on Secretary-General

(Based on information provided by the Protocol and Liaison Service)

The new Permanent Representative of Italy to the United Nations, Maurizio Massari, paid a courtesy call on UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.  He earlier presented his credentials to the Secretariat on 19 July (see Press Release BIO/5407).

Before his latest appointment, Mr. Massari was his country’s Permanent Representative to the European Union in Brussels between June 2016 and April 2021.

He was appointed Ambassador to Egypt in February 2013, having previously served as the Special Envoy of the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the Mediterranean and the Middle East between January 2012 and February 2013; Head of the Press Department and Spokesman for the Foreign Ministry from 2009 to January 2012; and Head of the Policy Analysis and Planning Unit from 2007 until 2008.

Among his other appointments in a diplomatic career that began in 1985, Mr. Massari served as Ambassador and Chief of Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in Serbia and Montenegro, beginning in January 2003.  He was First Political Counsellor at Italy’s Embassy in Washington, D.C., from July 1998 to June 2001, dealing particularly with United States policy towards the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Western Balkans.

Mr. Massari earned a master’s degree in international public policy from Johns Hopkins University, in the United States, in 2001; a fellowship certificate from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, also in the United States, in 1998; and a political science degree from the Instituto Universitario Orientale in Naples, Italy, where he specialized in Eastern European affairs.

He is the author of books on political reforms in the Soviet Union under President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and on the post-communist Russian Federation.