Attilio Cattani

Nationality

Italy

Date of Birth

1900

Date of Death

1972

Political
Preference

Attilio Cattani was born in Sanremo and graduated in law at the University of Bologna in 1921.
Cattani started his diplomatic career in 1927 and became Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1961 to 1965. Cattani was a career diplomat and favoured the idea of a united Europe.

After Cattani served in several consular offices, Italian Foreign Minister Alcide de Gasperi appointed Cattani head of Office of the Ministry’s Political Affairs Directorate in November 1945. The subsequent Foreign Minister, Count Carlo Sforza, promoted Cattani to deputy director general for economic affairs (1947) and then sent him to Paris as an Italian delegate to the Conference for European Economic Cooperation (CEEC). In this capacity, Cattani sent a report reserved to his direct political superior, expressing doubts about the latter’s project concerning a proposal for an Italian-French customs union. This regional objective – according to Cattani – would have been an embarrassment to the broader plans of European cooperation. Minister Sforza liked the frankness of the Sanremese diplomat and promoted him to the second-class plenipotentiary Minister and, in February 1949, appointed him deputy delegate of the permanent Italian representation at the OEEC.

In Paris, Cattani attended the signing of Treaty of Paris on the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. He remained in the French capital until 1955, when he was called back to Rome as director general for economic affairs. In this capacity, Cattani was the main Italian negotiator at the Messina Conference (1955) and then the founding treaties of the European Economic Community (EEC) and Euratom (Treaties of Rome, 1957).