Enrico Letta

Enrico Letta (born 20 August 1966) is an Italian politician who served as Prime Minister of Italy from April 2013 to February 2014, leading a grand coalition of centre-left and centre-right parties.

He was the leader of the Democratic Party (PD) from March 2021 to March 2023.

From 1991 to 1995, Letta was president of the Youth of the European People's Party, the official youth wing of the European People's Party, a political party at European level founded by national-level Christian democratic parties, including the Italian DC; he used his presidency to help strengthen long-term connections among a variety of centrist parties in Europe, and has since remained a convinced supporter of the European Union and European integration.

During the Ciampi Cabinet headed by Carlo Azeglio Ciampi in 1993 and 1994, Letta worked as chief-of-staff for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Beniamino Andreatta; Andreatta, a left-leaning Christian Democrat economist with whom Letta had already been collaborating in a think tank known as Agenzia di Ricerche e Legislazione (AREL), played a highly influential role in Letta's political career.

Following the collapse of the DC in 1994, Letta joined its immediate successor, the Italian People's Party (PPI); after serving as secretary general of the Euro Committee within the Ministry of Treasury from 1996 to 1997, he became deputy secretary of the party in 1997 and 1998, when it was fully allied with the centre-left.

After working as an academic, Letta entered politics in 1998 when he was appointed to the Cabinet as Minister for the Community Policies, a role he held until 1999 when he was promoted to become Minister of Industry, Commerce, and Crafts.

In 1998, after the fall of Romano Prodi's first government, Letta was appointed Minister for the Community Policies in cabinet of Massimo D'Alema at the age of 32, becoming the youngest cabinet minister in post-war Italy.

In 1999, Letta became Minister of Industry, Commerce and Crafts in the second government of D'Alema; a position that he hold until 2001, serving also in the cabinet of Giuliano Amato.

During Amato's government he hold the role of Minister of Foreign Trade too.

In 2001, he left the Cabinet upon his election to the Chamber of Deputies.

From 2001 to 2003, Letta was professor at the University Carlo Cattaneo near Varese, and then he taught at the Sant'Anna School in Pisa in 2003 and at the HEC Paris in 2004.

Letta, a Catholic, began his political career in the Christian Democracy (DC), the dominant centrist and Roman Catholic party, which ruled Italy for almost fifty years.

In the 2001 Italian general election, Letta was elected to the Chamber of Deputies as a member of Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy, a newly formed centrist formation to which the Italian People's Party had joined.

In the following year, he was appointed national responsible for economic policies of The Daisy.

In 2004, Letta was elected member of the European Parliament, with nearly 179,000 votes, within The Olive Tree list, joining the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group.

As MEP he became member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

Letta served also in the committee for relations with the Maghreb countries and the Arab Maghreb Union.

From 2006 to 2008, he was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers.

In 2006, Letta was re-elected to the Chamber of Deputies and was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers in the second government of Romano Prodi, thereby succeeding his uncle Gianni Letta who had held the same position in the outgoing cabinet of Silvio Berlusconi.

In this post, he became the closest advisor of Prime Minister Prodi, becoming one of the most influential politicians within the government.

However, Prodi's government fell after only two years following tensions within its majority caused by the resignation of the Minister of Justice, Clemente Mastella.

In 2007, Letta was one of the senior founding members of the Democratic Party, and in 2009 was elected as its Deputy Secretary.

In 2007, together with other The Daisy's members, Letta joined the Democratic Party (PD), the new centre-left party, born from the union between The Daisy and the Democrats of the Left.

Following the 2008 Italian general election, which saw a victory of the centre-right, Letta returned the post to his uncle, when the Berlusconi IV Cabinet was sworn in.

After the 2013 Italian general election produced an inconclusive result, and following negotiations between party leaders, President Giorgio Napolitano gave him the task of forming a national unity government (Letta Cabinet), composed of Letta's PD, the centre-right The People of Freedom (PdL), and the centrist Civic Choice, in order to mitigate the economic and social crises engulfing Italy as a result of the Great Recession.

Following an agreement between parties, Letta resigned as PD Deputy Secretary and was appointed Prime Minister of Italy on 28 April 2013.

His government tried to promote economic recovery by securing a funding deal from the European Union to alleviate youth unemployment and abolished the party subsidies, something seen as a watershed moment for Italian politics, which for years had depended upon public funds.

In November 2013, PdL leader Silvio Berlusconi attempted to withdraw his party's support from the government in order to bring about a change of Prime Minister; in response, all of the cabinet's centre-right ministers chose to leave the PdL and formed a new party, saying they wished to continue supporting Letta.

Despite securing his position, the election in December 2013 of Matteo Renzi as PD secretary brought significant leadership tensions within the PD to public view.

After several weeks of denying that he would seek a change, Renzi publicly challenged Letta for the position of Prime Minister on 13 February 2014.

Letta quickly lost the support of his colleagues and resigned as Prime Minister on 22 February.

Following his resignation, Letta initially retired from politics, leaving Italy to accept appointment as dean of the School of International Affairs at Sciences Po in Paris.

In March 2021, the PD secretary Nicola Zingaretti resigned after growing tensions within the party.

Many prominent members of the party asked Letta to become the new leader; after a few days, Letta announced that he would return to Italy to accept the candidacy, and he was elected as new secretary by the national assembly on 14 March 2021.

On 4 October 2021, Letta was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Siena district.

Letta was born in Pisa, Tuscany, to Giorgio Letta, an Abruzzo-born professor of mathematics who taught probability theory at the University of Pisa, member of the Lincean Academy and of the National Academy of the Sciences, and Anna Banchi, born in Sassari and raised in Porto Torres of Tuscan and Sardinian origins.

Born into a numerous family, uncles on his father's side include the centre-right politician Gianni Letta, a close advisor of Silvio Berlusconi, and the archeologist Cesare Letta, while one of his paternal aunts, Maria Teresa Letta, served as vice president of the Italian Red Cross; a maternal great-uncle is the poet and playwright Gian Paolo Bazzoni.

After spending part of his childhood in Strasbourg, Letta completed his schooling in Italy at the liceo classico Galileo Galilei in Pisa.

He has a degree in political science, which he received from the University of Pisa and subsequently obtained a PhD at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, a Graduate School with university status.

Letta also faced the early stages of the 2015 European migrant crisis, including the 2013 Lampedusa migrant shipwreck, the deadliest shipwreck in the recent history of the Mediterranean Sea; in response, Letta implemented Operation Mare Nostrum to patrol the maritime borders and rescue migrants.