However, the centre-left coalition of Romano Prodi won the election and from 1996 to 2001, Frattini served as chairman of the parliamentary committee for the supervision of intelligence (COPACO).

215/2004, on "Rules on conflicts of interest", approved by Parliament on 13 July 2004, received criticism from the Council of Europe's Venice Commission on its compatibility with international standards on freedom of expression and pluralism of the media.

[23] In November 2006, the commissioner's concern for child welfare extended to video games, calling for tougher controls; anything relating to stricter self-regulation to an outright ban.

[24] In 2007, Frattini called for a ban on the horror title Rule of Rose, and criticised the EU-endorsed PEGI system for granting the game a 16-years-or-over age rating.

[28] Interviewed by Reuters he declared his intention to promote online communications monitoring and censorship of "dangerous words" like "bomb, kill, genocide or terrorism".

[31] In 2008, Frattini joined the newly formed People of Freedom (PdL) and left on unpaid leave as Commissioner to run for election in Italy.

During his term as European Commissioner, Frattini was also appointed by Prime Minister Berlusconi to the coordinate assistance from the government for the conduct of the Winter Olympics in Turin 2006.

Cooperation between the two coast guards started in May 2009, with protests from international groups for the protection of human rights, which criticized the return of migrants – including eligible asylum seekers – to Libya, which had not ratified the UN Convention on Refugees; the policy was subsequently suspended but not officially repudiated.

[36] In September 2010, on the occasion of the second visit of Gaddafi to Rome, Frattini declared "We have blocked the trafficking of illegal immigrants", despite the figures showing the continuation of migratory flows, and despite being mainly people entitled to forms of international protection.

[37] In February 2011, in a set-up changed by the Arab spring uprisings, Frattini claimed to want to "mobilize the Mediterranean countries" and the EU, through the Frontex agency, for patrols and refoulements.

[38] However following the fall of the governments of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Gaddafi in Libya, the number of migrants attempting to reach Italy and Europe surged.

[42] The European Court of Human Rights, in the Hirsi v. Italy ruling of 23 February 2012, condemned Italy for breach of the convention, in particular with regard to Article 3 (prohibition of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment) and Article 4 of Protocol IV (prohibition of collective expulsions); in this case, 200 Somali and Eritrean migrants had been rejected in Libya under the Benghazi agreement, without having the possibility of applying for asylum in Europe.

[43] The reaction of Italian diplomacy, led by Frattini, to the revolts of the Arab spring and the Libyan civil war was defined as "reactive" and "unrealistic" by the ISPI-IAI 2012 report edited by Alessandro Colombo and Ettore Greco.

If the initial hesitations and the abrupt U-turn on the Qaddafi regime can constitute an element in common with other countries, Italy is the only international actor who long sought to "cling to its own imaginary role of mediator ", for which however lacked both power and necessary authority.

[44] With the evolution of the conflict, Frattini and Italian diplomacy resorted to the "usual option to follow the stronger allies", facilitated in this by the "dilution of Franco-British unilateralism in the multilateral framework of NATO" and by the guarantee of U.S.

[44] As far as European politics is concerned, according to Colombo and Greco, the reaction capacity of the Berlusconi IV government proved to be "totally insufficient", in the absence of a coherent long-term and vulnerable strategy to the internal divisions of the majority and to a "persistent underestimation of risks ".

[49] The U.S. ambassador in Italy, Ronald Spogli, informed Washington, in a confidential cable distributed by WikiLeaks, of how Berlusconi "constantly refuses the strategic advice of his Foreign Ministry, demoralized, devoid of resources and increasingly irrelevant".

[63] In May 2014, Frattini was awarded an honorary degree from the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation for his commitment to the development of “mutual understanding and relations” between Italy and Russia.

[70] In 2020, while holding a sport judge position in the trial of the doping case of PRC swimmer Sun Yang, it was revealed that Frattimi had made comments about dog meat eating in China and used derogatory terms against the Chinese people on social media over a number of years.

[73] Interviewed by Reuters in 2007, Frattini said it was his intention to investigate technical possibilities for implementing internet monitoring of "dangerous words" such as "bombs", "killing", "genocide", and "terrorism".

In the interview granted and published on 2 November 2007, Frattini stressed that, to respond to the security problem, "what is to be done is simple: you go to a nomad camp in Rome, for example on the Christopher Columbus, and to those who are there you ask" what's your life?

[80] In November 2009, he called "suggestive" Roberto Castelli's proposal for a constitutional amendment to include a cross in the Italian flag: "For now we wish to defend the right to keep the crucifix in our [school] classes, later we'll see if we can do more."

"[81] On 22 October 2010, he declared to the Osservatore Romano that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam should ally to fight atheism, which he defined, in the same interview, as a "perverse phenomenon" on a par with extremism.