Picchi, a long time London resident until recently served as deputy minister of foreign affairs of Italy under the Conte I cabinet from 2018 to 2019.

He is a member of parliament since 2006 as he was elected four times to the Camera dei deputati and has been a long serving member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, where he was among the leadership and participated or lead some 28 Electoral Observation Missions including to the US, UK, Germany, Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, Kirghizstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, Tunisia.

[2] In 2008 he was re-elected in the same constituency with 13,239 preference votes[2] for the People of Freedom party[citation needed] and, from June 2008, was a member of the Italian Parliamentary delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

In February 2017, he was among the founding members of the Machiavelli Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a conservative think tank based in Florence.

[3][4] In 2018 Picchi was elected to its fourth parliament in the constituency of Massa Lucca Pistoia Prato with Lega Salvini Premier.