Elio Di Rupo

Elio Di Rupo (born 18 July 1951) is a Belgian politician who has served as the minister-president of Wallonia since 2019.

He is affiliated with the Socialist Party.

He went during the preparation of his doctorate to the University of Leeds (United Kingdom), where his function was that of lecture member of staff in 1977–1978.

He was the first francophone to hold the office since Paul Vanden Boeynants in 1979, and the country's first socialist prime minister since Edmond Leburton left office in 1974.

Di Rupo was also Belgium's first prime minister of non-Belgian descent, and the world's second openly gay person and first openly gay man to be head of government in modern times.

Di Rupo was born in Morlanwelz, Wallonia, to Italian parents.

His father was born in San Valentino in Abruzzo Citeriore.

While Di Rupo was born in Belgium, his brothers and sisters were all born in Italy.

When he was one year old, his father died in a car crash and his mother was unable to raise all seven children.

Due to the poor financial state of his family, three of his brothers were raised in a nearby orphanage.

When he was 12, he attended boarding school.

Due to medical issues, Di Rupo had to re-do his first year of high school twice, but eventually excelled in science at the end of his high school years.

This led him to pursue a degree in chemistry at the University of Mons, where he eventually obtained a PhD in Chemistry, after being a part-time lecturer at Leeds University as well.

Di Rupo came in contact with the socialist movement for the first time during his studies in Mons, where he first obtained a master's degree and afterwards a PhD in chemistry.

He started his political career as an attaché at the cabinet of Jean-Maurice Dehousse in 1980–81.

Professionally, Di Rupo was at the same time cabinet member and then Deputy Head of Cabinet of the minister of finance of that time of the Walloon region and consequently Deputy Head of Cabinet of the minister of finance and energy of the Walloon region at that time Philippe Busquin (1981–85) and superintendent of the energy-inspection of the ministry of the Walloon region.

He is a deputy (MP) for the Arrondissement of Mons in the Belgian Chamber of Representatives.

He once described François Mitterrand as being "a character from a novel".

His first political mandate came in 1982, when he was Councillor of Mons (until 1985, and again from 1988 until 2000).

In 1986, he was mayor of health, urban renewal and social affairs.

In 1987, he got his national political breakthrough.

He was elected as member of the Chamber of Deputies and went two years later for a short time to the European Parliament.

PS had been in the government subsequently since 1988 (in the regional government and in the federal government), but the liberal PRL (now MR) became in the 1999-elections as strong as the PS. Apart from those two, Ecolo also became an important political party.

Di Rupo realised that drastic action was required to regain the position of the PS. By several measures, such as "Contrat d'avenir pour la Wallonie" (Contract for the Future of Wallonia) and a new generation of party leaders, by which Marie Arena was important, he tried to reassemble the left wing-forces around him.

In 1991, Di Rupo was chosen as a senator, but shortly afterwards (1992), he took in the French-speaking community his first ministerial function in Education and later also Media.

These were his responsibilities until Guy Coëme, who was mentioned in the Agusta-scandal, resigned and Di Rupo went to the federal government in 1994 as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Traffic and Governmental companies.

Following the elections in 1995, he remained the Vice-Prime Minister of Belgium and was appointed minister of Economics and Telecommunications.

In 1995 he signed the merger of the Belgian airline Sabena with Swiss Air that eventually led to the bankruptcy of Sabena with thousands of unemployed employees as result.

During the regional and federal elections of 1995 and 1999, the PS lost many of its votes, partly because of corruption scandals in the 1990s (named Agusta-scandal and UNIOP-affair), in which the most prominent PS-politicians were involved.

In 1996, at the time of the Dutroux affair, Olivier Trusgnach, a prostitute, alleged that Di Rupo paid him for sex while Trusgnach was still a minor.

This accusation could have meant the end of his political career.

Di Rupo denied the accusations.

After the federal and regional elections of June 1999 in which, due to the Dioxin Affair, the Christian-Democrats lost many of their votes, Di Rupo negotiated with the Flemish socialists of sp.a, the Liberals and Green Party to form a "purple-green" government.

In 2000, he became the mayor of Mons, which is the capital of the province of Hainaut.

Di Rupo himself was in charge of the function of minister-president of the Walloon region, but already in October of the same year the members of the party chose him as president and in April 2000, he was succeeded in his function of minister-president by Jean-Claude Van Cauwenberghe.

As new president of the party, Di Rupo was forced to make a generation change within the PS and go down a new path.

Successfully, because in the elections of 2003, PS regained the electoral score of 1991 and was by far the most important political party before MR.

During the regional elections of 2004, it also became the most important party in the Brussels capital region.

Di Rupo changed, in 2004, the liberal coalition partner for the Christian-democratic party, in the Walloon Government and in the Brussels Capital Government (in the last also the green party Ecolo was part of the government).

Di Rupo previously served as the prime minister of Belgium from 6 December 2011 to 11 October 2014, heading the Di Rupo Government.