Being a member of the Christian Democracy (DC) he served at the Italian Senate between 1992 and 1994 and was the minister of transport in the period 1989–1992.

[2] He was a professor of transport economics and worked at the faculty of political science of the University of Padua.

[1] Following the dissolution of the DC in 1994 he retired from politics, but he joined the Union of the Centre in 2003 from which he resigned in 2008.

[2] In 2004 Bernini founded a low cost airline company, MyAir, and headed it.

[4] In Summer 2010 he was hospitalized following a heart attack and died in a retirement home in Castelfranco Veneto on the New Year's Day of 2011.