Sergio Mattarella

Sergio Mattarella OMRI OMCA (Italian pronunciation: [ˈsɛrdʒo mattaˈrɛlla]; born 23 July 1941) is an Italian politician, jurist, academic, and lawyer who has been President of Italy since 2015. He is the longest-serving president in the history of the Italian Republic. Following Giorgio Napolitano's death in 2023, Mattarella became the only living Italian president.

A Catholic leftist politician, Mattarella was a leading member of the Christian Democracy party from the early 1980s until its dissolution. He served as Minister for Parliamentary Relations from 1987 to 1989, and Minister of Education from 1989 to 1990. In 1994, Mattarella was among the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI), serving as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy from 1998 to 1999, and Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2001. He joined The Daisy in 2002 and was one of the founders of the Democratic Party (PD) in 2007, leaving it when he retired from politics in 2008. He also served as a judge of the Constitutional Court of Italy from 2011 to 2015.

On 31 January 2015, Mattarella was elected to the presidency on the fourth ballot, supported by the centre-left coalition majority led by the PD and centrist parties. Despite having initially ruled out a second term, he was re-elected on 29 January 2022, becoming the second Italian president to be re-elected, the first being Napolitano. As of 2024, five prime ministers have served under his presidency, among them Matteo Renzi, then the PD's leader and main sponsor of his presidential candidacy, Paolo Gentiloni, a leading member of the PD who succeeded Renzi after his resignation in 2016, Giuseppe Conte, at that time an independent politician who governed both with right-wing and left-wing coalitions in two consecutive cabinets, Mario Draghi, a banker and former president of the European Central Bank, who was appointed by Mattarella to lead a national unity government following Conte's resignation, and Giorgia Meloni, first ever female prime minister and leader of the right-wing coalition which won the general election in September 2022.

During his long-time tenure, Italy faced the aftermath of the Great Recession, as well as the severe European migrant crisis, which deeply marked Italian political, economic and social life, bringing to the rise of populist parties. Moreover, in 2020, Italy became one of the countries worst affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, being the first country in the Western world to implement a national lockdown to stop the spread of the disease. Like his predecessor Napolitano, also Mattarella was accused by his right-wing rivals of having transformed the largely ceremonial role of head of state into an executive one, staunchly opposing the appointment of Eurosceptic ministers, like Paolo Savona, being then threatened with impeachment, or refusing to call for snap elections, appointing Gentiloni and Draghi as new prime ministers.