Paolo Gentiloni

Paolo Gentiloni (2019)

Paolo Gentiloni Silveri (born November 22, 1954 in Rome ) is an Italian politician of the Partito Democratico (PD). He was Prime Minister of Italy from December 12, 2016 to June 1, 2018 . Since December 1, 2019 he has been EU Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and Commissioner for Taxes and Customs Union in the von der Leyen Commission .

Previously, Gentiloni was Minister of Communications from 2006–2008 and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Italy from 2014–2016. Since March 2019 he has been presidente , i.e. protocol party chairman, of the PD.

family

Paolo Gentiloni comes from the Italian noble family of Counts Gentiloni Silveri , nobles of Filottrano, Cingoli and Macerata, from Tolentino in the province of Macerata in the central Italian region of Marche . The family headquarters, dating from the 13th century, is adjacent to the Basilica of San Nicola and was affected by the 2016 earthquake. One of his ancestors was Vincenzo Ottorino Gentiloni in 1913 with the so-called Patto Gentiloni the political Catholicism paved the way to the Italian Parliament. In 2015, Paolo Gentiloni was given honorary citizenship of Tolentino.

Gentiloni has been married to the architect Emanuela Di Mauro since 1988. The couple have no children.

Political career

Gentiloni attended a Montessori school and had a Catholic education from the catechist Agnese Moro, the daughter of Aldo Moro . He graduated from school at the Liceo Torquato Tasso in Rome, which was mainly attended by children from middle-class families, had a strongly politicized student body from 1968 and produced many prominent politicians. He then completed a degree in political science at La Sapienza University .

Left radicalism and environmental movement

Gentiloni (right) with Francesco Rutelli (1993)

Gentiloni is an exponent of the 1968 movement . As a student he was involved in the left Movimento Studentesco around Mario Capanna . Then in 1976 Gentiloni was one of the founders of the Maoist Movimento Lavoratori per il Socialismo (MLpS), of which he was regional chairman in Lazio . In 1981 the MLpS merged into the likewise left-wing Partito di Unità Proletaria per il Comunismo (PdUP), for which Gentiloni worked in local politics. He also wrote for the new-left magazine Pace e Guerra . Then, under the influence of Chicco Testa , he turned to the environmental movement. From 1984 to 1993 he headed La nuova ecologia (“The new environmental protection”), the monthly magazine of the Italian environmental protection organization Legambiente . From 1990 Gentiloni worked as a professional journalist for the weekly magazine L'Espresso .

At the beginning of the 1990s he was close to Francesco Rutelli , then national coordinator of the Italian Greens ( Federazione dei Verdi ), and was therefore - alongside Roberto Giachetti - counted among the "Rutelli Boys". He was Rutelli's spokesman in the 1993 election campaign for the mayor's office in Rome. After his election victory, he became press spokesman and speechwriter for the mayor, later councilor for tourism and the organization of the " Holy Year " 2000. Like Rutelli, Gentiloni was one of the founders of the liberal I Democratici party in 1999 .

MP and Minister

On the list of La Margherita cited by Rutelli , he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in the 2001 parliamentary elections, to which he has belonged ever since. In 2002 he co-founded the party Democrazia è Libertà - La Margherita , in which the Democratici merged with the Christian Democratic PPI . In Parliament, Gentiloni served on the Communications, Postal and Transport Committee and the Public Broadcasting Supervision Committee ( Rai ) from 2001-06 and 2008-13 . He also chaired the latter from 2005 to 2006. From 2006 to 2008 he was communications minister in the Prodi II cabinet .

Paolo Gentiloni together with the US Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome , June 2016

The La Margherita party merged in 2007 in the center-left rallying party Partito Democratico (PD), of which Gentiloni was a founding committee. Unlike his former mentor Rutelli, Gentiloni remained in the PD even after Pier Luigi Bersani (from the left wing) was elected party chairman in 2009. Within the party, Gentiloni is assigned to the Christian-social wing, AreaDem , which tends towards the center and is led by Dario Franceschini . He was also a supporter of Matteo Renzi , who was elected party chairman at the end of 2013.

As successor to Federica Mogherini , who had been appointed EU foreign representative , Gentiloni was Foreign Minister in the Renzi cabinet from October 2014 to December 2016 .

Prime Minister

Gentiloni at the ceremonial handover to Prime Minister by his predecessor Matteo Renzi on December 12, 2016 in Rome

On December 11, 2016, six days after Matteo Renzi's resignation , President Sergio Mattarella entrusted Gentiloni with forming a government. He headed a center coalition cabinet made up of PD, Nuovo Centrodestra (NCD) and smaller parties. In the 2018 parliamentary election , he was re-elected to the House of Representatives as a direct candidate in the constituency of Rome I. However, since the PD lost the election overall, he handed over governance to Giuseppe Conte on June 1, 2018 .

On March 17, 2019, the party congress elected PD Gentiloni as its presidente . This means that he is the party chairman in terms of protocol, but traditionally the segretario , currently Nicola Zingaretti , is in charge of day-to-day politics .

EU commissioner

The recently formed Conte II government consisting of PD and Movimento 5 Stelle (five-star movement) nominated Gentiloni as Italian EU Commissioner at the beginning of September 2019 . In the von der Leyen Commission, he took over responsibility for the economy and currency, including taxes and the customs union .