Giacomo Benedetto FRSA^[2] (born August 1972^[3]) is a British Italian political scientist and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair at Royal Holloway, University of London.^[4] He is an expert in European Union politics, and has researched and published extensively on the European Parliament, Euroscepticism, and the EU budget.^[5] Benedetto is also associate editor of the peer-reviewed European Journal of Government and Economics,^[6] and co-ordinator of the EUROSCI Network Centre in the UK.^[7]

Benedetto completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Sussex and his graduate studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science, from which he earned an MSc(Econ) and a PhD.^[4] His doctoral thesis (2005), under the supervision of Simon Hix, dealt with Institutionalised Consensus in Europe's Parliament.^[8] Benedetto started his academic career as a lecturer at the University of Manchester in 2005.^[9] He joined Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2006,^[10] and was appointed Jean Monnet Chair in 2016, with an inaugural lecture entitled £350 million per week and why Europe needs a budget.^[11] Benedetto is a grandson of Geoffrey Grigson, the British poet, editor and critic.^[12][13]

As an expert in EU budgetary politics, Benedetto is co-author of the Study on the Potential and Limitations of Reforming the Financing of the EU Budget prepared for the EU's High Level Group on Own Resources, the so-called Monti Group.^[14][15] As a Jean Monnet Chair, he was also invited to provide oral evidence on Brexit and the EU budget by the House of Lords EU financial affairs sub-committee of the select committee on the European Union,^[16] and to provide written evidence for the European Parliament Committee on Budgets on the EU budget during the previous decade.^[17] For the election of new parliamentarians in 2019, the European Parliament commissioned Benedetto to author a History of the EU Budget, which was published in 23 languages.^[18]

• Benedetto, G., & S. Milio (eds) (2012), European Union budget reform: institutions, policy and economic crisis. Palgrave Macmillan.^[19]
• Benedetto, G. (2013), "The EU budget after Lisbon: Rigidity and reduced spending?" Journal of Public Policy 33(3): 345–369.
• Nuñez Ferrer, J., J. Le Cacheux, G. Benedetto, & M. Saunier (2016), Study on the Potential and Limitations of Reforming the Financing of the EU Budget: Expertise commissioned by the European Commission on behalf of the High Level Group on Own Resources. Centre for European Policy Studies.
• Benedetto, G. (2017), "Institutions and the route to reform of the European Union's budget revenue", Empirica 44(4): 615–633.
• Benedetto, G. (2017), "Power, money and reversion points: The European Union's annual budgets since 2010", Journal of European Public Policy 24(5): 633–652.
• Benedetto, G. (2019), "The European Parliament as a budgetary extractor since the Lisbon Treaty", Journal of European Integration 41(3): 329-345.
• Benedetto, G. (2019), The History of the EU Budget, European Parliament.
• Benedetto, G, S. Hix, & N. Mastrorocco (2020), "The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918-2017", American Political Science Review 114(3): 928-939.