Giacomo Benedetto

Giacomo Benedetto FRSA (born August 1972 ) is a British Italian political scientist and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London.

He is an expert in European Union politics, and has researched and published extensively on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, and the EU budget.

Benedetto is also associate editor of the peer-reviewed European Journal of Government and Economics, and co-ordinator of the EUROSCI Network Centre in the UK.

Benedetto completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Sussex and his graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, from which he earned an MSc(Econ) and a PhD. His doctoral thesis (2005), under the supervision of Simon Hix, dealt with Institutionalised Consensus in Europe's Parliament.

Benedetto started his academic career as a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 2005.

He joined Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2006, and was appointed Jean Monnet Chair in 2016, with an inaugural lecture entitled £350 million per week and why Europe needs a budget.

Benedetto is a grandson of Geoffrey Grigson, the British poet, editor and critic.

As an expert in EU budgetary politics, Benedetto is co-author of the Study on the Potential and Limitations of Reforming the Financing of the EU Budget prepared for the EU's High Level Group on Own Resources, the so-called Monti Group.

As a Jean Monnet Chair, he was also invited to provide oral evidence on Brexit and the EU budget by the House of Lords EU financial affairs sub-committee of the select committee on the European Union, and to provide written evidence for the European Parliament Committee on Budgets on the EU budget during the previous decade.

For the election of new parliamentarians in 2019, the European Parliament commissioned Benedetto to author a History of the EU Budget, which was published in 23 languages.