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.Quirinale, il governo di Letta giura davanti a Napolitano, Il Fatto Quotidiano He later was the leader of the Democratic Party (PD) from March 2021 to March 2023.Letta eletto segretario: "Serve un nuovo Pd aperto, non partito del potere", Sky Tg24
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 2001, he left the Cabinet upon his election to the Chamber of Deputies. From 2006 to 2008, he was appointed Secretary of the Council of Ministers.Enrico Letta, Enciclopedia Treccani In 2007, Letta was one of the senior founding members of the Democratic Party, and in 2009 was elected as its Deputy Secretary.Italian Parliament Website LETTA Enrico – PD Retrieved 24 April 2013
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.Nuovo governo, incarico a Enrico Letta. Napolitano: "I media cooperino", Il Fatto Quotidiano 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.Tre canali di finanziamento, più trasparenza. Ecco punto per punto il ddl del governo, Corriere della SeraVertice lavoro, Letta ai ministri europei: «Non c'è più tempo, si deve agire subito Scelta sciagurata guardare solo i conti» – Il Messaggero . Ilmessaggero.it. Retrieved on 24 August 2013.Letta: all'Italia 1,5 miliardi per il lavoro. Grillo «poteva mandare tutto in vacca», Corriere della Sera 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.Letta: perché difendo Mare Nostrum, Avvenire
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.Enrico Letta, Sciences Po In March 2021, the PD secretary Nicola Zingaretti resigned after growing tensions within the party.Pd, Zingaretti si dimette. Dice addio il decimo segretario in 14 anni, Il Sole 24 Ore 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.Letta, il giorno della scelta. Zingaretti: rilancerà il Pd, il manifestoLetta: "Non vi serve un nuovo segretario, ma un nuovo Pd", Huffington Post On 4 October 2021, Letta was elected to the Chamber of Deputies for the Siena constituency.Elezioni suppletive Siena: vince Letta, La Stampa He resigned on 20 December 2024. to become Dean of IE University’s School of Politics, Economics and Global Affairs in Madrid, Spain.
Early life and education 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 archaeologist 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.
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.Governo. Enrico Letta, l’allievo di Andreatta diventa presidente del Consiglio, Il Giornale
Political career
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. 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 European political party 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. 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 held until 2001, serving also in the cabinet of Giuliano Amato.Enrico Letta, Il Sole 24 Ore During Amato's government he held the role of Minister of Foreign Trade too.DDL presentati dal Ministero del commercio con l'estero (Governo Amato-II), Parlamento
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 the economic policies of The Daisy.Enrico Letta, Biografie Online
In 2004, Letta was elected member of the European Parliament, with nearly 179,000 votes, within The Olive Tree list,Elezioni Europee del 2004. Circoscrizione Italia Nord-Orientale, Dipartimento per gli Affari Interni joining the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group. As MEP he became a 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.Members of the European Parliament, European Parliament
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."Mastella to Drop Support for Prodi, Favors Elections", Bloomberg, 21 January 2008."Italy PM in cabinet crisis talks", BBC News, 21 January 2008. 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.
Leadership election candidacy
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. Having been a founding member of the party, Letta run in the first leadership election, which was held as an open primary. He announced his candidacy in July 2007 through a YouTube video.Pd: Letta: «Mi candido». Video sul web, Corriere della Sera A few weeks after the announcement, he compared the PD to Wikipedia, stating: "As in Wikipedia, even in the PD each of the hundreds of thousands of members must bring their own contributions, their own skills, which in certain fields are certainly more important than mine and those of the other leaders of the centre-left."Letta leader? Senza grinta, Il Fatto Quotidiano In support of his candidacy, Letta founded the 360 Association, a centrist and Christian leftist group, mainly composed by former members of The Daisy.
Letta's candidacy was supported by prominent members of the Italian centre-left, like Francesco Cossiga, Paolo De Castro, Gianni Pittella, Vito De Filippo and many other former members of The Daisy.De Castro: "Candidatura di Letta grande occasione per coinvolgere la società , Enrico Letta Moreover, Letta's faction was composed by politicians considered close to Prime Minister Romano Prodi, a Christian leftist professor and founding father of the Italian centre-left. However, Letta had to face the politician who, more than any other, had worked to the formation of the Democratic Party and who was unanimously considered the future leader of the centre-left, Walter Veltroni, the incumbent Mayor of Rome. In the primary election, Veltroni won by a landslide with 75.8% of votes, followed by the former Minister of Health Rosy Bindi with 12.9% and Letta with 11.0%.
After the primary election, Veltroni appointed Letta as the national responsible for labour. In May 2008, after the defeat in the 2008 election, Letta was appointed Shadow Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the second and last Shadow Cabinet formed in Italy.Partito Democratico
Deputy Secretary of the Democratic Party
During the leadership election of 2009, Letta supported the eventual winner, the social-democrat Pier Luigi Bersani, being appointed Deputy Secretary by the party's national convention.