Profile: New Italian Ambassador to Egypt, Giampaolo Cantini

CAIRO - 13 September 2017: The new Italian Ambassador to Egypt Giampaolo Cantini arrived to Cairo on Wednesday to assume his post after presenting his credentials to President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi.

Cantini, 60 years old, graduated from the faculty of economics and political science in Capalbio, in Italy to begin his career in 1983.

Cantini worked as First Commercial Secretary of the Italian Mission in Addis Ababa on December 1, 1988, then First Secretary and diplomat of the Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations in New York on August 1, 1989.

He also took part in the Italian mission to Algeria and as a UN commission consultant starting May 1, 1993.

He was appointed to the Presidential Secretariat in the Office of Diplomatic Affairs on September 1, 1994; served as a Senior Adviser for Immigration and Social Affairs in Washington on August 30, 1999, and then worked in the Third Office of the General Directorate for Multilateral Political Affairs and Human Rights in 2003.

He was then appointed as head of the bureau in 2003, and later as a plenipotentiary minister on January 2, 2005.

Cantini served as the consul-general in Jerusalem on January 30, 2012, as Director General of the Department of Cooperation for Development on January 16, 2013, and was promoted to ambassador on January 2, 2016, then assistant secretary-general of the Italian Foreign Ministry in August 2016. He was awarded the Order of the Italian Republic in 2008.